Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/668

 made was inappropriate. But she took out her toilet articles and did everything in such a way that there was nothing in the least disturbing or unsuitable in it.

Neither of them could eat, however, and they sat long before they could make up their minds to go to bed.

"I am very glad that I persuaded him to receive extreme unction to-morrow," said Kitty, as she combed her soft perfumed hair, before her mirror, sitting in her dressing-sack. "I never saw it given; but mamma told me that they repeat prayers for restoration to health."

"Do you believe that he can get well?" asked Levin, as he watched the narrow parting at the back of her little round head disappear as she moved she comb forward.

"I asked the doctor; he says that he cannot live more than three days. But what does he know about it? I am glad that I persuaded him," she said, looking at her husband from behind her hair. "All things are possible," she added, with that peculiar, almost crafty, expression which came over her face when she spoke about religion.

Never, since the conversation that they had while they were engaged, had they spoken about religion; but Kitty still continued to go to church and to say her prayers with the calm conviction that she was fulfilling a duty. Notwithstanding the confession, which her husband had felt impelled to make, she firmly believed that he was a good Christian, perhaps better even than herself, and that all he had said about it was only one of his absurd masculine freaks such as he liked to indulge in, just as he did when he jested about her broderie anglaise—as if good people mended holes, but she purposely created them.

"There! This woman, Marya Nikolayevna, would never have been able to persuade him," said Levin; and.... I must confess that I am very, very glad that you came. You made everything look so neat and comfortable!" ....

He took her hand, but did not kiss it; it seemed to him a profanation even to kiss her hand in the presence