As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other.  Kitty knew that the words she had uttered in anger about her husband’s infidelity and her humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her.  Dolly for her part knew all she had wanted to find out.  She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that Kitty’s misery, her inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky.  Kitty said not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.

“I have nothing to make me miserable,” she said, getting calmer; “but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all?  You can’t imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything.”

“Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?” asked Dolly, smiling.

“The most utterly loathsome and coarse:  I can’t tell you.  It’s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse.  As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome.  Come, how am I to tell you?” she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister’s eyes.  “Father began saying something to me just now....  It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married.  Mother takes me to a ball:  it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me.  I know it’s not the truth, but I can’t drive away such thoughts.  Eligible suitors, as they call them—­I can’t bear to see them.  It seems to me they’re taking stock of me and summing me up.  In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward.  And then!  The doctor....  Then...”  Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him without the grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before her imagination.

“Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most loathsome light,” she went on.  “That’s my illness.  Perhaps it will pass off.”

“But you mustn’t think about it.”

“I can’t help it.  I’m never happy except with the children at your house.”

“What a pity you can’t be with me!”

“Oh, yes, I’m coming.  I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll persuade mamma to let me.”

Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister’s and nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to be.  The two sisters brought all the six children successfully through it, but Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad.