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By Root 1014 0

lie down. Levin sat there listening to the doctor tell about a quack mesmerist and watching the ashes of his cigarette. It was a period of rest and he had become oblivious. He had entirely forgotten what was going on now. He listened to the doctor’s story and understood it. Suddenly there was a scream unlike anything he had ever heard. The scream was so terrible that Levin did not even jump up, but, holding his breath, gave the doctor a frightened, questioning look. The doctor cocked his head to one side, listened, and smiled approvingly. It was all so extraordinary that nothing any longer astonished Levin: ‘Probably it should be so,’ he thought and went on sitting. Whose scream was it? He jumped up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, went round Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and stood in his place at the head of the bed. The screaming had ceased, but something was changed now. What - he did not see or understand, nor did he want to see and understand. But he saw it from Lizaveta Petrovna’s face: her face was stern and pale and still just as resolute, though her jaws twitched a little and her eyes were fixed on Kitty. Kitty’s burning, tormented face, with a strand of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her raised hands asked for his. Seizing his hands in her sweaty hands, she started pressing them to her face.

‘Don’t leave, don’t leave! I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid!’ she spoke quickly. ‘Mama, take my earrings. They bother me. You’re not afraid? Soon, Lizaveta Petrovna, soon ...’

She spoke quickly, quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly her face became distorted, and she pushed him away from her.

‘No, it’s terrible! I’ll die, I’ll die! Go, go!’ she cried, and again came that scream that was unlike anything in the world.

Levin clutched his head and ran out of the room.

‘Never mind, never mind, it’s all right!’ Dolly said after him.

But whatever they said, he knew that all was now lost. Leaning his head against the doorpost, he stood in the next room and heard a shrieking and howling such as he had never heard before, and he knew that these cries were coming from what had once been Kitty. He had long ceased wishing for the child. He now hated this child. He did not even wish for her to live now; he only wished for an end to this terrible suffering.

‘Doctor! What is it? What is it? My God!’ he said, seizing the doctor by the arm as he came in.

‘It’s nearly over,’ said the doctor. And the doctor’s face was so serious as he said it that Levin understood this ‘nearly over’ to mean she was dying.

Forgetting himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was Lizaveta Petrovna’s face. It was still more stern and frowning. Kitty’s face was not there. In place of it, where it used to be, was something dreadful both in its strained look and in the sound that came from it. He leaned his head against the wooden bedstead, feeling that his heart was bursting. The terrible screaming would not stop, it became still more terrible and then, as if reaching the final limit of the terrible, it suddenly stopped. Levin did not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt: the screaming stopped, and there was a quiet stirring, a rustle and quick breathing, and her faltering, alive, gentle and happy voice softly said: ‘It’s over.’

He raised his head. Her arms resting strengthlessly on the blanket, remarkably beautiful and quiet, she silently looked at him and tried but was unable to smile.

And suddenly from that mysterious and terrible, unearthly world in which he had lived for those twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself instantly transported into the former, ordinary world, but radiant now with such a new light of happiness that he could not bear it. The taut strings all snapped. Sobs and tears of joy, which he could never have foreseen, rose in him with such force, heaving his whole body, that for a long time they prevented him from speaking.

Falling on his knees beside the bed, he held his wife’s hand to his lips, kissing it, and the hand responded to his kisses with a weak movement