every moment that he had reached the last limit, and that his heart would burst with his agony. But the minutes still went by, hours and hours, and his feelings of agony and horror kept growing worse and more un endurable. All the ordinary conditions of life, without which it is impossible to take cognizance of anything, ceased to exist for Levin. He lost all consciousness of time. Now the minutes when she called him to her and he held her moist hand, which at one time would press his with extraordinary force, and again push him away, seemed hours; then again the hours would seem to him minutes.
He was surprised when Lizavyeta Petrovna asked for a light, and he learned that it was five o'clock in the evening. If they had told him that it was only ten o'clock in the morning, he would have been just as much surprised. Where the time had gone, what he had done, where he had been, he could not have told. Sometimes he saw Kitty's flushed face, now troubled and piteous, then calm and almost smiling, as she tried to reassure him. Then he saw the princess, flushed with anxiety, her gray curls in disorder, swallowing down her tears and biting her lips to keep from crying. He had also seen Dolly, and the doctor smoking great cigarettes, and Lizavyeta Petrovna, with a calm, serious, but reassuring look, and the old prince, pacing the dining-room with a frowning face. But how they came and went, and where they had been, he could not tell.
The princess had been with the doctor in Kitty's room, then in the library, where a well-set table had appeared; then she disappeared, and Dolly was in her place.
Then Levin remembered that they sent him somewhere; he moved a divan and a table zealously, thinking it was for her sake; and only when it was done did he learn that they were preparing his own bed for the night.
He was sent to the library to ask the doctor something; the doctor replied, and then began to speak of the disorders of the duma, or town-council. Then they sent him to the princess's bedchamber to get a holy image made of silver, with a golden trimming, from
