The oak falls in the storm

The Prince and Koznyshev take the trap; the others hurry home on foot as the cloud comes on, its black fore part rushing like sooty smoke. The children run ahead yelling, and the first drop strikes the iron gutter as they reach the porch. Agatha Mikhaylovna thought Kitty was with them; Mitya is in the Kolok with the nurse. Levin snatches the plaids and runs. The cloud covers the sun until it is dark as an eclipse; the wind bends the acacias, dock leaves and treetops one way and uncovers the white branches of the birches. Near the wood everything bursts into flame, the sky seems to crack, and when he opens his dazzled eyes the crown of a familiar oak shifts and falls crashing through the other trees. 'Oh God! only not on them!' he says, knowing the prayer is senseless and repeating it. They are at the far end under an old lime, two dark figures bending over a green-hooded perambulator, still in the postures they took when the storm began. Kitty's dress is soaked through, Mitya dry and asleep. Levin reproaches her, retracts it, and walks home pressing her hand where the nurse cannot see.

The storm answers the debate with weather, and Levin's senseless prayer over an oak that has already fallen is the chapter's argument about faith: he knows it can change nothing and can do nothing better. Tolstoy pays the terror off in domestic coin — a shoe full of water, a reproach he immediately regrets, a hand pressed out of the nurse's sight — and leaves Mitya asleep throughout.