Chapter 140 — Anna Karenina

During tea with Agafea Mihalovna, Levin learns Nikolay is ill again, perhaps seriously. Domestic peace shatters with news from the provincial world Levin hoped to keep at margin. Agafea's plain speech carries reality into the nest.

Kitty insists she will go with him to Nikolay. Her moral clarity contrasts Levin's impulse to protect her and himself from the squalid scene. She treats marriage as shared duty toward suffering kin, not optional charity.

Levin resists, saying she will be a hindrance and voicing horror of the common wench and degrading surroundings he associates with Nikolay's life. Class disgust, fear of death, and masculine control collide with Kitty's insistence. The nest phase ends as mortality enters.

Nikolay's illness shatters the nest; Kitty insists on shared duty while Levin recoils from squalor and class disgust. Agafea's plain news brings mortality to the margin Levin hoped to keep outside marriage.

Kitty treats Nikolay's illness as marital duty; Levin's horror of the wench and the smell shows class disgust colliding with compassion he cannot yet match. The chapter closes on that beat with no easy moral, only the next consequence waiting in the following pages.

Nikolay's squalid illness forces Levin to confront flesh, class, and duty in one room; Kitty's steadiness previews the nursing courage she will show at the deathbed.