奥布隆斯基问列文进城有何贵干时，列文脸红了，并因自己的脸红而对自己恼火，因为他无法回答"我是来向您的小姨子求婚的"，尽管这确实是他此行的目的。
列文家族和谢尔巴茨基家族都是莫斯科古老显贵的世家，一向关系亲密友好。这种亲密关系在列文求学时代更加深厚。他曾与基蒂和多莉的哥哥——年轻的谢尔巴茨基公爵一起准备大学入学考试，并同时入学。那时列文常去谢尔巴茨基家，他爱上了谢尔巴茨基这个家庭。说来奇怪，康斯坦丁·列文爱上的正是这个家庭，尤其是家中的女性成员。列文不记得自己的母亲，唯一的姐姐又比他年长许多，所以在谢尔巴茨基家，他第一次看到了那个古老、高贵、有教养、可敬的家庭的内在生活——这是他因父母双亡而未曾体验过的。这个家庭的每个成员，特别是女性成员，在他眼中仿佛都笼罩着一层神秘的诗意面纱，他不仅看不到她们有任何缺点，而且在这层诗意面纱之下，他假定她们拥有最高尚的情感和一切可能的完美。为什么三位小姐今天说法语、明天说英语？为什么在某些时辰她们轮流弹钢琴，琴声能传到楼上哥哥的房间（学生们在那里学习）？为什么有法语文学、音乐、绘画、舞蹈等家庭教师来拜访她们？为什么在特定时辰，三位小姐与莉侬小姐一起，穿着缎面斗篷乘车前往特维尔林荫大道——多莉穿长斗篷，娜塔丽亚穿中长斗篷，而基蒂的斗篷短得让所有人都能看到她穿着紧身红色长袜的匀称双腿？为什么她们必须在戴金边帽徽的仆人陪同下在林荫道上散步？——这一切，以及她们神秘世界中发生的许多其他事情，他都不理解，但他确信那里所做的一切都非常美好，而他爱的正是这种神秘氛围。
求学时代，他几乎爱上了大姐多莉，但她很快就嫁给了奥布隆斯基。接着他又开始爱上二姐。他感觉自己似乎必须爱上姐妹中的一个，只是拿不定主意该爱哪一个。但娜塔丽亚刚踏入社交界就嫁给了外交官利沃夫。列文大学毕业时，基蒂还是个小姑娘。年轻的谢尔巴茨基加入了海军，在波罗的海溺亡，于是列文与谢尔巴茨基家的关系，尽管他与奥布隆斯基仍是朋友，却变得不那么亲密了。但今年初冬，在乡下待了一年后，列文来到莫斯科，见到了谢尔巴茨基一家，他才意识到自己命中注定爱上的究竟是三姐妹中的哪一个。
按理说，像他这样出身良好、家境富裕、三十二岁的男子，向年轻的谢尔巴茨基公爵小姐求婚，本是再简单不过的事；很可能他立刻就会被视为一门好亲事。但列文正在恋爱，因此在他看来，基蒂各方面都如此完美，简直是超凡脱俗的存在；而他自己则如此卑微、如此凡俗，简直无法想象别人乃至基蒂本人会认为他配得上她。
他在莫斯科如痴如醉地度过了两个月，几乎天天在社交场合见到基蒂（他去这些场合就是为了遇见她），然后他突然断定这是不可能的，于是回到了乡下。
列文认为不可能的理由是：在基蒂家人眼中，他对迷人的基蒂来说是一个不划算、不般配的对象，而且基蒂本人不可能爱他。在她家人看来，他没有一份寻常的、明确的职业和社会地位；而他的同龄人，在他三十二岁的年纪，已经有人当了上校，有人成了教授，有人是银行和铁路的董事，或是像奥布隆斯基那样担任委员会主席。而他（他很清楚自己在别人眼中是什么样子）不过是个乡绅，整天忙着养牛、打猎、盖谷仓——换句话说，是个没出息、不成器的家伙，做的正是上流社会认为只有不中用的人才会做的事。
神秘而迷人的基蒂本人也不可能爱上像他自认为这样丑陋的人，尤其是这样一个平凡、毫不出众的人。此外，他过去对基蒂的态度——因与基蒂哥哥的友谊而产生的那种成年人对孩子的态度——在他看来又是爱情的另一重障碍。他觉得自己这样一个相貌丑陋、本性善良的人，也许可以被人喜欢作为朋友；但要像他爱基蒂那样被爱，就必须是个英俊男人，更重要的是，得是个出类拔萃的男人。
他听说过女人们常常会爱上丑陋而平凡的男人，但他不相信，因为他以己度人——他自己除了美丽、神秘、出众的女人之外，是不可能爱上别人的。
但在乡下独处了两个月后，他确信这并非他年轻时经历过的那些激情；这种感觉让他一刻不得安宁；他无法在不解决"她会不会成为他的妻子"这个问题的情况下继续生活；他的绝望只是出于自己的想象，他没有任何证据表明自己会被拒绝。于是他现在带着坚定的决心来到莫斯科：要求婚，如果被接受就结婚。否则……他无法想象如果被拒绝，自己会变成什么样。
When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed,
and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer,
“I have come to make your sister-in-law an offer,” though that was
precisely what he had come for.
The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble
Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms.
This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin’s student days. He
had both prepared for the university with the young Prince
Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the
same time with him. In those days Levin used often to be in the
Shtcherbatskys’ house, and he was in love with the Shtcherbatsky
household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the household, the
family, that Konstantin Levin was in love, especially with the feminine
half of the household. Levin did not remember his own mother, and his
only sister was older than he was, so that it was in the
Shtcherbatskys’ house that he saw for the first time that inner life of
an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been
deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the members of that
family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it were,
wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and he not only
perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the poetical veil that
shrouded them he assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and
every possible perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one
day to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at certain
hours they played by turns on the piano, the sounds of which were
audible in their brother’s room above, where the students used to work;
why they were visited by those professors of French literature, of
music, of drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three young
ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to the Tversky
boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Dolly in a long one, Natalia
in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short that her shapely legs in
tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to all beholders; why it was
they had to walk about the Tversky boulevard escorted by a footman with
a gold cockade in his hat—all this and much more that was done in their
mysterious world he did not understand, but he was sure that everything
that was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with
the mystery of the proceedings.
In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest, Dolly,
but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being in love with
the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be in love with one of
the sisters, only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too,
had hardly made her appearance in the world when she married the
diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university.
Young Shtcherbatsky went into the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and
Levin’s relations with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship
with Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the winter of
this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and saw
the Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he was
indeed destined to love.
One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for him, a
man of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two years old, to
make the young Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all
likelihood he would at once have been looked upon as a good match. But
Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in
every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and
that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be
conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy
of her.
After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing
Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went so as to meet
her, he abruptly decided that it could not be, and went back to the
country.
Levin’s conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that in
the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for
the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. In her
family’s eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and position in
society, while his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two,
were already, one a colonel, and another a professor, another director
of a bank and railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he
(he knew very well how he must appear to others) was a country
gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building
barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out
well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world,
is done by people fit for nothing else.
The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly
person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary,
in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty in the
past—the attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his
friendship with her brother—seemed to him yet another obstacle to love.
An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he
supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as
that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and,
still more, a distinguished man.
He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but
he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not
himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional
women.
But after spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced
that this was not one of those passions of which he had had experience
in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant’s rest;
that he could not live without deciding the question, would she or
would she not be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only from
his own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would be
rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a firm determination to
make an offer, and get married if he were accepted. Or ... he could not
conceive what would become of him if he were rejected.
