- Dolly insists on the importance of regularizing Anna's position.
- Anna admits that not a day goes by without her thoughts turning to a divorce, and that whenever she thinks about it she can't fall asleep without taking morphine.
- Anna runs through the ideal situation, then bumps up against the impossibility of gaining custody of her child, Seryozha. She tells Dolly that the only beings she loves more than herself are Seryozha and Alexis (Vronsky), and that having them both is an impossible dream.
- Anna bursts into tears in her unhappiness.
- Dolly goes to bed dreaming of her home life and children.
- After leaving Dolly's bedroom, Anna takes some morphine and goes into her own bedroom in a cheerful mood.
- Vronsky looks for signs of a conversation about divorce, but Anna hides her thoughts well.
- The next morning Dolly leaves for Levin's house. She asks the servants for their thoughts on the Vronsky estate, and finds that they coincide with her own thoughts: rich, but dull. The servants also think that, at heart, Vronsky's a bit of a miser.
- Dolly gets home and says only nice things about her stay at Vronsky's. In fact, in talking about the visit, she gets so excited that she genuinely forgets the vague dissatisfaction she felt at being there.