Would he
care to see people? Or was this gnawing pain within him too much to
permit him to do that?
'I'd like to talk,' said Karenin. 'There must be all sorts of
lively-minded people here. Let them come and gossip with me. It will
distract me--and I can't tell you how interesting it makes everything
that is going on to have seen the dawn of one's own last day.'
'Your last day!'
'Fowler will kill me.'
'But he thinks not.'
'Fowler will kill me. If he does not he will not leave very much of me.
So that this is my last day anyhow, the days afterwards if they come at
all to me, will be refuse. I know....'
Gardener was about to speak when Karenin went on again.
'I hope he kills me, Gardener. Don't be--old-fashioned. The thing I am
most afraid of is that last rag of life. I may just go on--a scarred
salvage of suffering stuff. And then--all the things I have hidden and
kept down or discounted or set right afterwards will get the better of
me. I shall be peevish. I may lose my grip upon my own egotism. It's
never been a very firm grip. No, no, Gardener, don't say that! You know
better, you've had glimpses of it. Suppose I came through on the other
side of this affair, belittled, vain, and spiteful, using the prestige I
have got among men by my good work in the past just to serve some small
invalid purpose.
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