Anna Karenina comes up the stairs and her face is brilliant and glowing, though not out of brightness; instead it hints at a conflagration on a dark night. When she sees her husband still up, she smiles as though she has just woken up and tells him it is late and he should be in bed. Alexey Alexandrovitch tells her he must have a talk with her.

She speaks as if she is surprised and as she sits down, suggesting that he would be better off sleeping than talking. Anna Karenina is speaking without thinking and she is surprised at her own capacity for lying, at how simple and easy it is for her to mask the truth. Alexey Alexandrovitch begins his prepared lecture by telling her he must warn her about something.

The look his wife gives him appears so simple and bright that anyone else would not have noticed anything unnatural about it. To him, though, there is a terrible falseness. This is the wife who notes every nuance of his and has always communicated her every joy, pleasure, and pain; to see her now, neither noticing his state of mind nor speaking of her own feelings at all, means something is terribly wrong. The “inmost recesses of her soul,” always so open to him before, are now closed against him. Even more, it is as if she is telling him that he cannot reach her and she does not care that it is so now—and will continue to be so in the future.

He starts again, telling her that her animated private conversation with Vronsky that evening attracted too much attention. Anna Karenina deliberately deflects this warning by laughing and saying one time he scolds her for being dull and now for being too lively. Tonight she was not dull and wonders if that offended him. When he does not answer, she wonders what he wants from her. Alexey Alexandrovitch pauses and realizes his prepared warning speech has turned into his own agitation over matters which should be dealt with by her conscience. He continues coldly.

He considers jealousy a base emotion, one far beneath him, but there are certain rules of propriety which must be adhered to, and this evening her behavior was not what he expects of her. Outwardly, Anna Karenina says she does not understand, but what she hears is that he does not care: he simply cares what others think.

As she casually prepares for bed, Alexey Alexandrovitch continues lecturing her. It is his duty to remind her that she has joined her life to him before God and if there is something else in her heart she must examine it and talk to him about it. He tells her he loves her—something she scoffs at to herself—and if he has somehow gotten a mistaken impression of events he asks her forgiveness. Finally, he tells her she and their son are the most likely to be hurt by this matter.

She blithely dismisses him and he goes to bed, and he does not say anything more to her when she comes to bed. As he snores, she thinks about the other man in her life.