Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 14
Whose scream was this? He jumped up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, edged round
Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and took up his position at Kitty’s pillow. The
scream had subsided, but there was some change now. What it was he did not see
and did not comprehend, and he had no wish to see or comprehend. But he saw it
by the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. Lizaveta Petrovna’s face was stern and pale, and
still as resolute, though her jaws were twitching, and her eyes were fixed intently
on Kitty. Kitty’s swollen and agonized face, a tress of hair clinging to her moist
brow, was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her lifted hands asked for his hands.
Clutching his chill hands in her moist ones, she began squeezing them to her face.
“Don’t go, don’t go! I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid!” she said rapidly. “Mamma,
take my earrings. They bother me. You’re not afraid? Quick, quick, Lizaveta Petrovna...”
She spoke quickly, very quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly her face was
drawn, she pushed him away.
“Oh, this is awful! I’m dying, I’m dying! Go away!” she shrieked, and again he
heard that unearthly scream.
Levin clutched at his head and ran out of the room.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s all right,” Dolly called after him.
But they might say what they liked, he knew now that all was over. He stood in
the next room, his head leaning against the door post, and heard shrieks, howls such
as he had never heard before, and he knew that what had been Kitty was uttering
these shrieks. He had long ago ceased to wish for the child. By now he loathed this
child. He did not even wish for her life now, all he longed for was the end of this
awful anguish.
“Doctor! What is it? What is it? By God!” he said, snatching at the doctor’s hand
as he came up.
“It’s the end,” said the doctor. And the doctor’s face was so grave as he said it that
Levin took the end as meaning her death.
Beside himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was the face of
Lizaveta Petrovna. It was even more frowning and stern. Kitty’s face he did not
know. In the place where it had been was something that was fearful in its strained
distortion and in the sounds that came from it. He fell down with his head on the
wooden framework of the bed, feeling that his heart was bursting. The awful scream
never paused, it became still more awful, and as though it had reached the utmost
limit of terror, suddenly it ceased. Levin could not believe his ears, but there could
be no doubt; the scream had ceased and he heard a subdued stir and bustle, and
hurried breathing, and her voice, gasping, alive, tender, and blissful, uttered softly,
“It’s over!”
He lifted his head. With her hands hanging exhausted on the quilt, looking extraordinarily
lovely and serene, she looked at him in silence and tried to smile, and
could not.
And suddenly, from the mysterious and awful far-away world in which he had
been living for the last twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself all in an instant borne
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