Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating.

The union Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the same point.

There had been nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already.

The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it had the first time.

Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself, for the weakness.