Chapter 162 — Anna Karenina

Sergey Ivanovitch walks toward Varenka rehearsing the speech he has prepared since youth: he loves her and offers his hand. She kneels with the children over mushrooms, glad of his presence, then rises saying the scene brings back her childhood. They walk alone where no one can hear, yet he does not begin. Against her will she breaks the silence about finding nothing in the wood, and he answers with talk of white edible funguses at the edge.

Varenka's heart throbs as being Koznishev's wife seems the height of happiness. Sergey sees her flushed cheeks and downcast eyes in painful suspense and feels that silence would slight her. He runs over his arguments and rehearses his words, but an unexpected reflection makes him ask what is the difference between the birch mushroom and the white mushroom. She answers about the stalk; both feel at once that it is over and what was to have been said will not be said. He speaks calmly of a dark man's chin; they turn toward the children. She feels sore, ashamed, and relieved. At home he decides he cannot be false to Marie's memory.

Kitty reads their calm crestfallen faces and knows her matchmaking failed. Riding home with Levin she says it does not bite, lifting his hand to her lips like a kiss on a priest's hand. When he asks which did not bite, she says both, and should have been like that, then notices peasants coming and says they did not see.