forget him! Let Serozha be brought into the corner-chamber, and let Mariette sleep near him."
Suddenly she shrank back and was silent; and, with a look of terror, raised her arms above her head as if to ward off a blow. She had recognized her husband.
"No, no," she said quickly, "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of dying. Alekseï, come here. I am in a hurry, because there is no time to be lost. I have only a few minutes to live; the fever will be upon me again, and I shall know nothing more. Now I am conscious; I understand everything and I see everything."
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's wrinkled face expressed acute suffering; he took her hand, and he wanted to speak, but his lower lip trembled so that he could not utter a word, and his emotion hardly allowed him to glance at the dying woman. Every time that he turned his head toward her, he saw her eyes fixed on him with a humility and enthusiastic affection which he had never seen there before.
"Wait! you do not know. .... Wait, wait!" .... She stopped to collect her thoughts. "Yes," she began again, "yes, yes, yes, this is what I want to say. Do not be astonished. I am always the same .... but there is another I within me, her I fear: it is she who loved him, him, and hated you; and I could not forget what I had once been. That was not I! Now I am myself, entirely, really myself, and not another. I am dying, I know that I am dying; ask him if I am not. I feel it now; there are those terrible weights on my hand and my feet and on my fingers. ... My fingers! they are enormous, but all that will soon be over. ... One thing only is indispensable to me: forgive me, forgive me wholly! I am a sinner; but Serozha's nurse told me that there was a holy martyr—what was her name?—who was worse than I. I will go to Rome; there is a desert there. I shall not trouble anybody there. I will. only take Serozha and my little daughter No, you cannot forgive me; I know very well that it is impossible. Go away, go away! you are too perfect!"
