In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there
must necessarily be either complete division between the husband
and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple
are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of
enterprise can be undertaken.

Many families remain for years in the same place, though both
husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither
complete division nor agreement between them.

Both Vronsky and Anna felt life in Moscow insupportable in the
heat and dust, when the spring sunshine was followed by the glare
of summer, and all the trees in the boulevards had long since
been in full leaf, and the leaves were covered with dust. But
they did not go back to Vozdvizhenskoe, as they had arranged to
do long before; they went on staying in Moscow, though they both
loathed it, because of late there had been no agreement between
them.

The irritability that kept them apart had no external cause, and
all efforts to come to an understanding intensified it, instead
of removing it. It was an inner irritation, grounded in her mind
on the conviction that his love had grown less; in his, on regret
that he had put himself for her sake in a difficult position,
which she, instead of lightening, made still more difficult.
Neither of them gave full utterance to their sense of grievance,
but they considered each other in the wrong, and tried on every
pretext to prove this to one another.