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Chapter 15.
He did not know whether it was late or early. The candles had all
burned out. Dolly had just been in the study and had suggested to the
doctor that he should lie down. Levin sat listening to the doctor’s
stories of a quack mesmerizer and looking at the ashes of his cigarette.
There had been a period of repose, and he had sunk into oblivion. He
had completely forgotten what was going on now. He heard the doctor’s
chat and understood it. Suddenly there came an unearthly shriek. The
shriek was so awful that Levin did not even jump up, but holding his
breath, gazed in terrified inquiry at the doctor. The doctor put his head
on one side, listened, and smiled approvingly. Everything was so ex-
traordinary that nothing could strike Levin as strange. “I suppose it
must be so,” he thought, and still sat where he was. Whose scream was
this? He jumped up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, edged round
Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and took up his position at Kitty’s
pillow. The scream had subsided, but there was some change now.
What it was he did not see and did not comprehend, and he had no
wish to see or comprehend. But he saw it by the face of Lizaveta
Petrovna. Lizaveta Petrovna’s face was stern and pale, and still as
resolute, though her jaws were twitching, and her eyes were fixed
intently on Kitty. Kitty’s swollen and agonized face, a tress of hair
clinging to her moist brow, was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her
lifted hands asked for his hands. Clutching his chill hands in her moist
ones, she began squeezing them to her face.
“Don’t go, don’t go! I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid!” she said rapidly.
“Mamma, take my earrings. They bother me. You’re not afraid? Quick,
quick, Lizaveta Petrovna...”
She spoke quickly, very quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly
her face was drawn, she pushed him away.
“Oh, this is awful! I’m dying, I’m dying! Go away!” she shrieked,
and again he heard that unearthly scream.
Levin clutched at his head and ran out of the room.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s all right,” Dolly called after him.
But they might say what they liked, he knew now that all was over.
He stood in the next room, his head leaning against the door post, and
heard shrieks, howls such as he had never heard before, and he knew
that what had been Kitty was uttering these shrieks. He had long ago
ceased to wish for the child. By now he loathed this child. He did not
even wish for her life now, all he longed for was the end of this awful
anguish.
“Doctor! what is it? What is it? By God!” he said, snatching at the
doctor’s hand as he came up.
“It’s the end,” said the doctor. And the doctor’s face was so grave as
he said it that Levin took THE END as meaning her death.
Beside himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw
was the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. It was even more frowning and
stern. Kitty’s face he did not know. In the place where it had been was
something that was fearful in its strained distortion and in the sounds
that came from it. He fell down with his head on the wooden frame-
work of the bed, feeling that his heart was bursting. The awful scream
never paused, it became still more awful, and as though it had reached