ad not been born alive.

"Pyotr!"

Olga Mihalovna called to her husband.

Pyotr Dmitritch looked round. It seemed as though a long time must
have passed since the last guest had departed and Olga Mihalovna
had insulted her husband, for Pyotr Dmitritch was perceptibly thinner
and hollow-eyed.

"What is it?" he asked, coming up to the bed.

He looked away, moved his lips and smiled with childlike helplessness.

"Is it all over?" asked Olga Mihalovna.

Pyotr Dmitritch tried to make some answer, but his lips quivered
and his mouth worked like a toothless old man's, like Uncle Nikolay
Nikolaitch's.

"Olya," he said, wringing his hands; big tears suddenly dropping
from his eyes. "Olya, I don't care about your property qualification,
nor the Circuit Courts . . ." (he gave a sob) "nor particular views,
nor those visitors, nor your fortune. . . . I don't care about
anything! Why didn't we take care of our child? Oh, it's no good
talking!"

With a despairing gesture he went out of the bedroom.

But nothing mattered to Olga Mihalovna now, there was a mistiness
in her brain from the chloroform, an emptiness in her soul. . . .
The dull indifference to life which had overcome her when the two
doctors were performing the operation still had possession of her.

TERROR

My Friend's Story

DMITRI PETROVITCH SILIN had taken his degree and entered the
government service in Petersburg, but at thirty he gave up his post
and went in for agriculture. His farming was fairly successful, and
yet it always seemed to me that he was not in his proper place, and
that he would do well to go back to Petersburg. When sunburnt, grey
with dust, exhausted with toil, he met me near the gates or at the
entrance, and then at supper struggled with sleepiness and his wife
took him off to bed as though he were a baby; or when, overcoming
his sleepiness, he began in his soft, cordial, almost imploring
voice, to talk about his really excellent ideas, I saw him not as
a farmer nor an agriculturist, but only as a worried and exhausted
man, and it was clear to me that he did not really care for farming,
but that all he wanted was for the day to be over and "Thank God
for it."

I liked to be with him, and I used to stay on his farm for two or
three days at a time. I liked his house, and his park, and his big
fruit garden, and the river--and his philosophy, which was clear,
though rather spiritless and rhetorical. I suppose I was fond of
him on h