m drowsy and sapped his energy. He was perhaps very clever,
talented, remarkably honest; perhaps if the sea and the mountains
had not closed him in on all sides, he might have become an excellent
Zemstvo leader, a statesman, an orator, a political writer, a saint.
Who knows? If so, was it not stupid to argue whether it were honest
or dishonest when a gifted and useful man--an artist or musician,
for instance--to escape from prison, breaks a wall and deceives
his jailers? Anything is honest when a man is in such a position.

At two o'clock Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sat down to dinner.
When the cook gave them rice and tomato soup, Laevsky said:

"The same thing every day. Why not have cabbage soup?"

"There are no cabbages."

"It's strange. Samoylenko has cabbage soup and Marya Konstantinovna
has cabbage soup, and only I am obliged to eat this mawkish mess.
We can't go on like this, darling."

As is common with the vast majority of husbands and wives, not a
single dinner had in earlier days passed without scenes and
fault-finding between Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Laevsky; but ever
since Laevsky had made up his mind that he did not love her, he had
tried to give way to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna in everything, spoke to
her gently and politely, smiled, and called her "darling."

"This soup tastes like liquorice," he said, smiling; he made an
effort to control himself and seem amiable, but could not refrain
from saying: "Nobody looks after the housekeeping. . . . If you are
too ill or busy with reading, let me look after the cooking."

In earlier days she would have said to him, "Do by all means," or,
"I see you want to turn me into a cook"; but now she only looked
at him timidly and flushed crimson.

"Well, how do you feel to-day?" he asked kindly.

"I am all right to-day. There is nothing but a little weakness."

"You must take care of yourself, darling. I am awfully anxious about
you."

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was ill in some way. Samoylenko said she had
intermittent fever, and gave her quinine; the other doctor,
Ustimovitch, a tall, lean, unsociable man, who used to sit at home
in the daytime, and in the evenings walk slowly up and down on the
sea-front coughing, with his hands folded behind him and a cane
stretched along his back, was of opinion that she had a female
complaint, and prescribed warm compresses. In old days, when Laevsky
loved her, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's illness had excited his pity and
terror;