More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to
move. To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking,
impossible, to talk of death and depressing subjects--also
impossible. To be silent, also impossible. "If I look at him he
will think I am studying him, I am afraid; if I don't look at
him, he'll think I'm thinking of other things. If I walk on
tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I'm ashamed." Kitty
evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to think
about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew
something, and all went well. She told him about herself even
and about her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and
petted him, and talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so
then she must know. The proof that her behavior and Agafea
Mihalovna's was not instinctive, animal, irrational, was that
apart from the physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both
Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the dying man something
else more important than the physical treatment, and something
which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafea
Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: "Well, thank
God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant
each one of us such a death." Katya in just the same way,
besides all her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the
very first day to persuade the sick man of the necessity of
taking the sacrament and receiving absolution.