her work to Nikolaï's room. He looked at her sternly and smiled scornfully when she told him that she had been ill. All day long he never ceased to cough and to groan piteously.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Worse," he replied with difficulty. "I am in pain,"
"Where do you feel the pain?"
"All over."
"You will see the end will come to-day," said Marya Nikolayevna, in an undertone.
Levin hushed her, thinking that his brother, whose ear was very acute, might hear; he turned and looked at him. Nikolaï had heard, but the words made no impression; his look remained as before, reproachful and intense.
"What makes you think so?" asked Levin, when she followed him into the corridor.
"He has begun to pick with his fingers."
"What do you mean?"
"This way," she said, plucking at the folds of her woolen dress. Levin himself noticed that all that day the invalid had been plucking at his bed-clothes as if to pick off something.
Marya Nikolayevna's prediction came true. Toward evening Nikolaï had not strength enough left to lift his arms, and his motionless eyes assumed an expression of concentrated attention. Even when his brother and Kitty bent over him in order that he might see them, this look remained unchanged. Kitty had the priest summoned to say the prayers for the dying.
While the priest was reading the prayer, the dying man gave no sign of life. His eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolayevna were standing by his bedside. Before the prayers were ended, Nikolaï stretched himself a little, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, having finished the prayer, placed the crucifix on his icy brow, then put it under his stole, and after he had stood for a moment or two longer, silently he touched the huge bloodless hand.
"It is all over," he said at last, and started to go away;
