The Conquest Reflex — Anna Karenina

The morning after the Shtcherbatskys, Vronsky drives to the Petersburg railway station to meet his mother and finds Oblonsky on the steps waiting for the same train. Oblonsky teases him with verse about a youth in love; Vronsky deflects but admits he went straight home, content with no desire for cabarets or companions. Oblonsky says he has come to meet a pretty woman, his sister Anna Karenina.

Vronsky knows the name dimly as something stiff and tedious and shrugs off praise for her husband Karenin as not in his line. They plan Sunday supper for a diva; Oblonsky asks whether Vronsky knows Levin, who left early and unhappy. Oblonsky hints Levin may have proposed to Kitty and been refused or wounded after months of careful courtship.

Vronsky straightens, says she might aim higher, compares rejected courtship to a blow to one's dignity unlike paid liaisons with Klaras, and feels like a conqueror chest out, eyes flashing. He forgets his mother until the guard names Countess Vronskaya's compartment. The train rolls in through frost, steam, and bustle. Only then does duty return: he respects and obeys his mother outwardly while feeling little inward love, a split his education makes normal and invisible to himself.