More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move. To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible;to talk of death and depressing subjects - also impossible. To be silent was also impossible. `If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am afraid of him; if I don't look at him, he'll think I'm thinking of other things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I'm ashamed.' Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew something, and all went well. She even told him about herself and about her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him, and petted him, and talked of cases of recovery, and all went well; therefore, she must know. The proof that her behavior and Agathya Mikhailovna's was not instinctive, animal, irrational, lay in that apart from the physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both Agathya Mikhailovna and Kitty required for the dying man something else more important than the physical treatment, and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agathya Mikhailovna, speaking of a man recently dead, had said: `Well, thank God, he took the sacrament and received Extreme Unction; God grant each one of us such a death.' Katia, in just the same way, besides all her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving Extreme Unction.
On getting back from the sickroom to their own two rooms for the night, Levin sat with hanging head, not knowing what to do. To say nothing of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual.
She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian insecticide. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.
Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o'clock all their things were arranged tidily and orderly in such a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home, like her rooms: the beds were made, brushes, combs, looking glasses were put out, table napkins were spread.
Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now, and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly.
She arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing shocking in it.
They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.
`I am very glad I persuaded him to receive Extreme Unction tomorrow,'
she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding looking glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a small-toothed comb. `I have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers said for recovery.'
`Do you suppose he can possibly recover?' said Levin, watching a slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually hidden when she passed the comb through the front.
`I asked the doctor; he said he couldn't live more than three days. But can they be sure? I'm very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him,'
she said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. `Anything is possible,' she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was always in her face when she spoke of religion.
Since their conversation about religion during their engagement neither of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on, always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say about her broderie anglaise - that good people patch holes but that she cut them out on purpose, and so on.
`Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to manage all this,' said Levin. `And... I must own I'm very, very glad you came. You are such purity that...' He took her hand and did not kiss it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper); he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.
`It would have been miserable for you to be alone,' she said, and lifting her hands which hid her cheeks, flushing with pleasure, twisted her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. `No,' she went on, `she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned lot at Soden.'
`Surely there are no people there so ill?'
`Worse.'
`What's so awful to me is that I can't but see him as he was when he was young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did not understand him then.'
`I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been friends!' she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.
`Yes, might have been ,' he said mournfully. `He's just one of those people of whom they say that they are not for this world.'
`But we have many days before us; we must go to bed,' said Kitty, glancing at her tiny watch.
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