Page 766 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolay, who lay
there breathing with what was left of lungs, had had a
strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how
they used to go to bed together as children, and how they

only waited till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room
to fling pillows at each other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly,
so that even their awe of Fyodor Bogdanitch could not
check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and
happiness. ‘And now that bent, hollow chest...and I, not
knowing what will become of me, or wherefore..’
‘K...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep
fidgeting, why don’t you go to sleep?’ his brother’s voice
called to him.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sleepy.’
‘I have had a good sleep, I’m not in a sweat now. Just
see, feel my shirt; it’s all wet, isn’t it?’
Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the
candle, but for a long while he could not sleep. The
question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little
clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented
itself—death.
‘Why, he’s dying—yes, he’ll die in the spring, and how
help him? What can I say to him? What do I know about
it? I’d even forgotten that it was at all.’

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