Page 1075 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them with such
gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin
did not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be
of any good to the patient. Above all, he feared the patient

would be angry at it. But the sick man, though he seemed
and was indifferent about it, was not angry, but only
abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what
she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to
whom Kitty had sent him, Levin, on opening the door,
came upon the sick man at the instant when, by Kitty’s
directions, they were changing his linen. The long white
ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder
blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya
Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve
of the night shirt, and could not get the long, limp arm
into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after Levin, was
not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and she
moved rapidly towards him.
‘Make haste,’ she said.
‘Oh, don’t you come,’ said the sick man angrily. ‘I’ll do
it my myself...’
‘What say?’ queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard
and saw he was ashamed and uncomfortable at being
naked before her.

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