Anna

Stepan Oblonsky's wife Dolly had discovered that her husband was having an affair. With her beauty fading and her household a wreck, she had had enough. Stepan fretfully wrote to his sister, Anna Karenina, asking her to come to Moscow and convince Dolly not to leave him. Later, while working at his job in the entrenched Moscow bureaucracy, Stepan received an unexpected visitor: Levin, an old friend from the university, came to discuss Dolly's sister …

…that she could not easily dismiss Count Vronsky from her mind. And stepping along the way, as Anna stepped out for a breath of air, there he was. "You know that I have come to be where you are; I can't help it," confessed the officer. Anna was both delighted and flattered by this, but it was simply unthinkable that anything could come of his attraction to her. After all, she was a married woman.