Within their respective works, Kundera and Towles exemplify how conflict is developed through characters engaging with the personalities of their loved ones. While reminiscing about the life of her beloved dog, Karenin, before his death, Tereza comes to the realization that “the love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no progress” (298). Although the romance between Tomas and Tereza is serendipitous and tenuous at times, it shows development. In spite of failed attempts to change one’s counterpart in a relationship, time fares favorably on the couple as both characters gradually begin to embody characteristics of the other. On the other hand, in A Gentleman in Moscow, the relationship between Sofia and the Count is more similar to Tereza’s relationship with Karenin than with her husband. Even though Sofia’s arrival disrupts the Count’s daily regimen, through repetition their new lifestyle develops the musical motifs which the Count identifies in Sofia’s piano music. A timely reunion with Katerina Litvinova, a poet from Kiev, further troubles the Count about Sofia’s predicament. The Count reflects after Katerina’s departure, “In the course of twenty years, this firefly, this pinwheel, this wonder of the world had become a woman who, when asked where she was going, could answer without the slightest hesitation: Does it matter?” (375). Towles foreshadows Sofia’s future in Moscow using Katerina as a poet, in what the Count