Dolly visits her sister Kitty in her pink boudoir to comfort her about her emotional distress, but her well-meaning attempts are immediately met with hostility and defensiveness. Kitty refuses to admit she is unhappy, insisting she has no grief, yet she soon breaks down and lashes out at Dolly for offering hypocritical pity. When Daria Alexandrovna gently brings up Levine and asks if he spoke to her, Kitty flies into a rage, flinging away her belt buckle and cruelly throwing Dolly's marital reconciliation in her face. Stung by her sister's harshness, Dolly sits in silent humiliation while Kitty hides her face and weeps.
Overwhelmed by remorse, Kitty drops to her knees, wraps her arms around Dolly, and begs for forgiveness through her tears. The two sisters find a fragile reconciliation, though neither dares to revisit the painful subjects of Levine or Wronsky. Instead, Kitty opens up about a deeper spiritual malaise, explaining that everything around her now feels vile, repulsive, and coarse. She confesses that her parents' desire to see her married makes her feel as though she is being marketed off, and the young men in society now strike her as intolerable judges measuring her worth. Even simple social pleasures and clothes fill her with discomfort and a sense of impropriety.
Kitty shares that she feels contaminated by ugly thoughts and that the only place she feels any peace is with Dolly and her children. Expressing a desperate wish to escape her current environment, Kitty insists on visiting her sister's home despite the danger of contagion. She successfully persuades her mother and moves in to help nurse Dolly's children through a bout of scarlet fever. Although the children recover safely, Kitty's own physical and mental health continues to deteriorate without improvement. Consequently, the Shcherbatskys leave Moscow during Lent to travel abroad in search of recovery.