Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sickroom, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man's bedside, and going up so that he would not have to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness, sympathetic and inoffensive, which is peculiar merely to women.
`We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden,' she said.
`You never thought I was to be your sister.'
`You would not have recognized me?' he said, with a smile which had become radiant at her entrance.
`Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed that Kostia has not mentioned you, and been anxious.'
But the sick man's interest did not last long.
Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man's envy of the living.
`I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here,' she said, turning away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. `We must ask about another room,' she said to her husband, `so that we might be nearer.'
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 5, Chapter 18[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 18 Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself be natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick man, his eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he did not see and did not distinguish the details of his brother's position. He smelt the awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and miserable condition, and heard the groans, and felt that nothing could be done to help. It never entered his head to analyze the details of the sick man's situation, to consider how that body was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated legs and thighs and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could not be made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to make things, if not better, at least not so bad. It made his blood run cold when he began to think of all these details. He was absolutely convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his brother's life or to relieve his suffering. But a consciousness of Levin's regarding all aid as out of the question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him. And this made it still more painful for Levin. To be in the sickroom was agony to him, not to be there was still worse. And he was continually, on various pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was unable to remain alone.
But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the sick man she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist's, set the maid who had come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid something under the quilt. Something was by her direction brought into the sickroom, something else was carried out. She herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillowcases, towels, and shirts.
The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to the patient. Above all, he was afraid the patient would be angry at it.
But the sick man, though he seemed to be indifferent about it, was not angry, but only abashed and on the whole seemed interested in what she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the instant when, by Kitty's direction, they were changing his linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the nightshirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after Levin, did not look in that direction, but the sick man groaned, and she moved rapidly toward him.
`Come, a little quicker,' she said.
`Oh, don't you come,' said the sick man angrily. `I'll do it myself....'
`What did you say?' queried Marya Nikolaevna.
But Kitty heard and saw he was ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.
`I'm not looking, I'm not looking!' she said, putting the arm in. `Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side - you do it,' she added.
`Please, run over for me, there's a little bottle in my small bag,' she said, turning to her husband, `you know, in the side pocket;bring it, please, and meanwhile they'll finish clearing up here.'