The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing,
and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle
with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous
agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that
gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did
not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life
trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his
enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his
enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in
the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the
sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around
his head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her
eyes.
"That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive
me!... They've come again; why don't they go away?... Oh, take
these cloaks off me!"
The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the
pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back
submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.
"Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and
I want nothing more.... Why doesn't _he_ come?" she said, turning
to the door towards Vronsky. "Do come, do come! Give him your
hand."
Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid
his face in his hands.
"Uncover your face--look at him! He's a saint," she said. "Oh!
uncover your face, do uncover it!" she said angrily. "Alexey
Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want to see him."
Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky's hands and drew them away
from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and
shame upon it.
"Give him your hand. Forgive him."
Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to
restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.
"Thank God, thank God!" she said, "now everything is ready. Only
to stretch my legs a little. There, that's capital. How badly
these flowers are done--not a bit like a violet," she said,
pointing to the hangings. "My God, my God! when will it end?
Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my
God, my God!"
And she tossed about on the bed.
The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was
ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The
whole day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness.
At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost
without pulse.