Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/479

 "Kah! kah! ah! what the devil are you doing? Why don't you go to sleep?" demanded his brother's voice.

"I don't know; insomnia, I guess."

"But I have been sleeping beautifully. I have not had any sweat at all. Just feel—no sweat."

Levin felt of him, then he got into bed again, put out the candle, but it was long before he went to sleep. Still in his mind arose this new question, how to live so as to be ready for the inevitable death?

"There! he is dying! Yes! he will die in the spring. How can I aid him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I had even forgotten that there was such a thing."

Levin had long before made the observation that often people who surprise you by an abrupt transition grow unendurable by reason of their gentleness and excessive humility, unreasonableness, and peremptory ways. He foresaw that this would be the case with his brother; and, in fact, Nikolaï's sweet temper was not of long duration. On the very next morning he awoke in an extremely irritable temper, and immediately began to pick a quarrel with his brother by touching him on the most tender points.

Levin felt himself to blame, but he could not be frank. He felt that if they had not both dissimulated their thoughts, but had spoken from their very hearts, they would have looked into each other's eyes, and he would have said only this: "You are going to die, you are going to die;" and Nikolaï would have answered only this: "I know that I am dying, and I am afraid, afraid, afraid."

And they would have said nothing more if they had spoken honestly from their hearts. But as this sincerity was not possible, Konstantin tried to do what all his life long he had never succeeded in doing, though he had observed that many persons could do it and that without doing it life was almost impossible,—he tried to talk about something that was not in his mind, and he felt that his brother divined his insincerity, and was