Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and completely forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went again in to his brother with Kitty.

Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, 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 had not 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 not jarring, which is peculiar 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 radiant smile at her entrance.

“Yes, I should.  What a good thing you let us know!  Not a day has passed that Kostya 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.”

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 less 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 sense of his 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 sick-room was agony to him, not to be there 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.