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away for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that
though she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for
nothing, but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolay
Dmitrievitch would come to grief without her, owing to the weak state
of his health, and begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote
quite differently. She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made
it up with him in Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial
town, where he had received a post in the government service. But
that he had quarreled with the head official, and was on his way back
to Moscow, only he had been taken so ill on the road that it was
doubtful if he would ever leave his bed again, she wrote. “It’s always of
you he has talked, and, besides, he has no more money left.”
“Read this; Dolly writes about you,” Kitty was beginning, with a
smile; but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on
her husband’s face.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“she writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death’s door. I shall
go to him.”
Kitty’s face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of
Dolly, all had vanished.
“When are you going?” she said.
“Tomorrow.”
“And I will go with you, can I?” she said.
“Kitty! What are you thinking of?” he said reproachfully.
“How do you mean?” offended that he should seem to take her
suggestion unwillingly and with vexation. “Why shouldn’t I go? I
shan’t be in your way. I...”
“I’m going because my brother is dying,” said Levin. “Why should
you...”
“Why? For the same reason as you.”
“And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her
being dull by herself,” thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a
matter of such gravity infuriated him.
“It’s out of the question,” he said sternly.
Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently
put down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The
tone in which her husband had said the last words wounded her,
especially because he evidently did not believe what she had said.
“I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly
come,” she said hastily and wrathfully. “Why out of the question?
Why do you say it’s out of the question?”
“Because it’ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and
to all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,” said Levin,
trying to be cool.
“Not at all. I don’t want anything. Where you can go, I can....”
“Well, for one thing then, because this woman’s there whom you
can’t meet.”
“I don’t know and don’t care to know who’s there and what. I know
that my husband’s brother is dying and my husband is going to him,
and I go with my husband too....”
“Kitty! Don’t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of
such importance that I can’t bear to think that you should bring in a
feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you’ll be dull
alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.”
“There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,” she said with
tears of wounded pride and fury. “I didn’t mean, it wasn’t weakness, it
wasn’t...I feel that it’s my duty to be with my husband when he’s in
trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to