‘No, no,’ she began, ‘I’m not afraid of him, I’m afraid of death. Alexei, come here. I’m hurrying because I have no time, I haven’t long to live, I’ll be feverish soon and won’t understand anything. Now I do understand, I understand everything, I see everything.’
Alexei Alexandrovich’s pinched faced acquired a suffering expression. He took her hand and wanted to say something, but was quite unable to speak; his lower lip trembled, but he kept struggling with his agitation and only occasionally glanced at her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes, which looked at him with such moved and rapturous tenderness as he had never seen in them before.
‘Wait, you don’t know ... Wait, wait, all of you ...’ She stopped, as if trying to collect her thoughts. ‘Yes,’ she began. ‘Yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m the same ... But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her - she fell in love with that man, and I wanted to hate you and couldn’t forget the other one who was there before. The one who is not me. Now I’m real, I’m whole. I’m dying now, I know I’ll die, ask him. I feel weights now - here they are - on my hands, my feet, my fingers. My fingers are like this - enormous ! But it will all end soon ... There’s one thing I need: forgive me, forgive me completely! I’m terrible, but my nanny told me: that holy martyr - what was her name? - she was worse.17 I’ll go to Rome, too, there are deserts there, and then I won’t bother anybody, I’ll take only Seryozha and my little girl ... No, you can’t forgive me! I know this can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too good!’ With one hot hand she held his hand, and with the other she pushed him away.
Alexei Alexandrovich’s inner disturbance kept growing and now reached such a degree that he ceased to struggle with it; he suddenly felt that what he had considered an inner disturbance was, on the contrary, a blissful state of soul, which suddenly gave him a new, previously unknown happiness. He was not thinking that the Christian law which he had wanted to follow all his life prescribed that he forgive and love his enemies; but the joyful feeling of love and forgiveness of his enemies filled his soul. He knelt down and, placing his head on the crook of her arm, which burned him like fire through her jacket, sobbed like a child. She embraced his balding head, moved closer to him, and raised her eyes with defiant pride.
‘Here he is, I knew it! Now good-bye all, good-bye! ... Again they’ve come, why don’t they go away? ... And do take these fur coats off me!’
The doctor took her arms away, carefully laid her back on the pillow and covered her shoulders. She lay back obediently and gazed straight ahead of her with radiant eyes.
‘Remember one thing, that all I need is forgiveness, and I want nothing more, nothing ... Why doesn’t
Vronsky came to the side of the bed and, seeing her, again covered his face with his hands.
‘Uncover your face, look at him. He’s a saint,’ she said. ‘No, uncover it, uncover your face!’ she said crossly. ‘Alexei Alexandrovich, uncover his face! I want to see him.’
Alexei Alexandrovich took Vronsky’s hands and drew them away from his face, terrible in the expression of suffering and shame that was on it.
‘Give him your hand. Forgive him.’
Alexei Alexandrovich gave him his hand, not holding back the tears that poured from his eyes.
‘Thank God, thank God,’ she said, ‘now everything is ready. Just let me stretch my legs a little. There, that’s wonderful. How tastelessly these flowers are done, quite unlike violets,’ she said, pointing to the wallpaper. ‘My God, my God! When will it end? Give me morphine. Doctor, give me morphine! Oh, my God, my God!’
And she began thrashing about in her bed.
*
The doctor and his colleagues said it was puerperal fever, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ends in death. All day there was fever, delirium and unconsciousness. By midnight the sick woman lay without feeling and almost without pulse.
The end was expected at any moment.
Vronsky went home, but came in the morning to inquire, and Alexei Alexandrovich, meeting him in the front hall, said:
‘Stay, she may ask for you,’ and himself led him to his wife’s boudoir.
Towards morning the excitement, liveliness, quickness of thought and speech began again, and again ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexei Alexandrovich came to the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting and, closing the door, sat down facing him.
‘Alexei Alexandrovich,’ said Vronsky, feeling that a talk was imminent, ‘I am unable to speak, unable to understand. Spare me! However painful it is for you, believe me, it is still more terrible for me.’
He was about to get up. But Alexei Alexandrovich took his hand and said:
