Anna Karenina - Part 7

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used,

especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same

way. Levin could not have believed three months before that he

could have gone quietly to sleep in the condition in which he was

that day, that leading an aimless, irrational life, living too

beyond his means, after drinking to excess (he could not call

what happened at the club anything else), forming inappropriately

friendly relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in

love, and a still more inappropriate call upon a woman who could

only be called a lost woman, after being fascinated by that woman

and causing his wife distress--he could still go quietly to

sleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night,

and the wine he had drunk, his sleep was sound and untroubled.

At five o'clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped

up and looked round. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there

was a light moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps.

"What is it?...what is it?" he said, half-asleep. "Kitty!

What is it?"

"Nothing," she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle

in her hand. "I felt unwell," she said, smiling a particularly

sweet and meaning smile.

"What? has it begun?" he said in terror. "We ought to send..."

and hurriedly he reached after his clothes.

"No, no," she said, smiling and holding his hand. "It's sure to

be nothing. I was rather unwell, only a little. It's all over

now."

And getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was

still. Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she

were holding her breath, and still more suspicious the expression

of peculiar tenderness and excitement with which, as she came

from behind the screen, she said "nothing," he was so sleepy that

he fell asleep at once. Only later he remembered the stillness

of her breathing, and understood all that must have been passing

in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not

stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman's

life. At seven o'clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on

his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed struggling

between regret at waking him, and the desire to talk to him.

"Kostya, don't be frightened. It's all right. But I fancy....

We ought to send for Lizaveta Petrovna."

The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding

some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few

days.