Vronsky asks to walk Dolly home so they can have “a little talk,” and an astonished Dolly says she would be delighted. Dolly’s imagination thinks of many requests Vronsky might make of her: to bring her children and come stay with them, to create a circle of friends who will accept Anna Karenina in Moscow, to talk about his part in Kitty’s illness. All of them are unpleasant but none of them are correct.

Because she has so much influence with Anna Karenina, he asks for Dolly’s help. That is all he says for a long while as they walk in silence. Finally he says that he believes Dolly came to visit not because she thinks their situation is normal but because despite their circumstances she loves Anna Karenina and wants to help her, which is true. Dolly begins to speak but Vronsky stops her, saying he is the most aware of his lover’s difficult situation and feels it most deeply because he sees himself as the cause of it.

Dolly suggests that, though it may be difficult, Vronsky is exaggerating their position. He erupts and says she cannot imagine the horrific two weeks they spent in St. Petersburg in which Anna Karenina was a moral outcast. Vronsky says he knows Anna Karenina is happy, but he wonders if it will last. Whether they have acted rightly or wrongly is of no importance now, for there is no changing the past. He and Anna Karenina are “bound together for life” by ties that are most sacred. They have one child and may have others, but a thousand other complications are ahead of them which she does not see or want to see. Vronsky cannot help seeing them. His own daughter, by law, does not even belong to him and he cannot bear it.

One day they may have a son. No matter how happy they may all be, that son will not bear his name or be able to inherit his property. There will be no official tie between Vronsky and his children. When he has tried to speak of this to Anna Karenina, she finds it irritating and does not understand how he feels. Vronsky cannot speak plainly to her about it.

A second frustration for Vronsky is that, though he is content and happy in their love, he must have something to do to feel useful. He is proud of the work he has already done and sees it as more important than anything his former companions at court or in the army are doing. Vronsky pauses before continuing, and he finally says that he wants to know what he is doing will not die with him. The children of the woman he loves will belong to someone who hates them and cares nothing for them.

Anna Karenina can change everything by getting a divorce, and Alexey Alexandrovitch would grant it if she asked. Though it is an agonizing thing for her to do, Anna Karenina must do it. Vronsky begs Dolly to help him convince her to write the letter. Dolly wonders why her sister-in-law has not thought if it herself until she remembers her half-closed eyelids; she is obviously trying to escape the difficult truths of her own life. Dolly agrees to help Vronsky.