s 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 d