Page 1074 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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 directions brought into the sick-room,
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, pillow cases,
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

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