Chapter 6 — Anna Karenina

When Stiva asks why Levin is in Moscow, Levin blushes and cannot say the true answer: he has come to make his sister-in-law an offer. The blush arrives before the backstory, and the backstory explains why speech feels dangerous. He grew up inside the Shtcherbatsky house after losing his mother, in love with the whole feminine world there: French and English days, piano upstairs, Kitty on the Tversky boulevard in red stockings and a short cloak. He loved the mystery of it and assumed perfection beneath manners he never fully understood.

On paper he is a good match: old family, solid means, thirty-two. In his head he is already rejected. While classmates became colonels, professors, or board presidents, he breeds cattle and builds barns, a fellow who has not turned out well by Moscow's scoreboard. Kitty seems too perfect; he seems too ordinary, and he still remembers treating her as a child through her brother. Two enchanted months ended when he convinced himself her family would never accept him. Alone in the country the feeling only sharpened: this is not boyish infatuation, and he cannot rest until he knows whether she could be his wife.

He has come back resolved to ask, marry if she accepts, and face whatever follows if she refuses. Or he could not conceive what would become of him if he were rejected.