Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 19
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 powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection 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 cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such a way that the hotel
rooms seemed like home: 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 fine 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 when they were engaged 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 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 a lot at Soden.”
“Surely there are not people there so ill?”
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