Anna Karenina - Part 5

Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before,

as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to

inhale in a bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him

the bottle, and the same look of passionate hope with which he

had taken the sacrament was now fastened on his brother,

demanding from him the confirmation of the doctor's words that

inhaling iodine worked wonders.

"Is Katya not here?" he gasped, looking round while Levin

reluctantly assented to the doctor's words. "No; so I can say

it.... It was for her sake I went through that farce. She's so

sweet; but you and I can't deceive ourselves. This is what I

believe in," he said, and, squeezing the bottle in his bony hand,

he began breathing over it.

At eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking

tea in their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them

breathlessly. She was pale, and her lips were quivering. "He is

dying!" she whispered. "I'm afraid will die this minute."

Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow

on the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.

"How do you feel?" Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.

"I feel I'm setting off," Nikolay said with difficulty, but with

extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did

not raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without

their reaching his brother's face. "Katya, go away!" he added.

Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.

"I'm setting off," he said again.

"Why do you think so?" said Levin, so as to say something.

"Because I'm setting off," he repeated, as though he had a liking

for the phrase. "It's the end."

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

"You had better lie down; you'd be easier," she said.

"I shall lie down soon enough," he pronounced slowly, "when I'm

dead," he said sarcastically, wrathfully. "Well, you can lay me

down if you like."

Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and

gazed at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with

closed eyes, but the muscles twitched from time to time on his

forehead, as with one thinking deeply and intensely. Levin

involuntarily thought with him of what it was that was happening

to him now, but in spite of all his mental efforts to go along

with him he saw by the expression of that calm, stern face that

for the dying man all was growing clearer and clearer that was

still as dark as ever for Levin.