Page 1087 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick
man fell into a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an
hour later by his cough. And all at once every hope
vanished in those about him and in himself. The reality of

his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in
the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even
of past hopes.
Without referring to what he had believed in half an
hour before, as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked
for iodine to inhale in a bottle covered with perforated
paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and the same look of
passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament
was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the
confirmation of the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine
worked wonders.
‘Is Katya not here?’ he gasped, looking round while
Levin reluctantly assented to the doctor’s words. ‘No; so I
can say it.... It was for her sake I went through that farce.
She’s so sweet; but you and I can’t deceive ourselves. This
is what I believe in,’ he said, and, squeezing the bottle in
his bony hand, he began breathing over it.
At eight o’clock in the evening Levin and his wife were
drinking tea in their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in
to them breathlessly. She was pale, and her lips were

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