stelev. He knew all about it, and it was not for nothing that he
looked at his friend's wife with eyes that seemed to say that she was
the real chief criminal and diphtheria was only her accomplice. She did
not think now of the moonlight evening on the Volga, nor the words of
love, nor their poetical life in the peasant's hut. She thought only
that from an idle whim, from self-indulgence, she had sullied herself
all over from head to foot in something filthy, sticky, which one could
never wash off....

"Oh, how fearfully false I've been!" she thought, recalling the troubled
passion she had known with Ryabovsky. "Curse it all!..."

At four o'clock she dined with Korostelev. He did nothing but scowl and
drink red wine, and did not eat a morsel. She ate nothing, either. At
one minute she was praying inwardly and vowing to God that if Dymov
recovered she would love him again and be a faithful wife to him. Then,
forgetting herself for a minute, she would look at Korostelev, and
think: "Surely it must be dull to be a humble, obscure person, not
remarkable in any way, especially with such a wrinkled face and bad
manners!"

Then it seemed to her that God would strike her dead that minute for
not having once been in her husband's study, for fear of infection. And
altogether she had a dull, despondent feeling and a conviction that her
life was spoilt, and that there was no setting it right anyhow....

After dinner darkness came on. When Olga Ivanovna went into the
drawing-room Korostelev was asleep on the sofa, with a gold-embroidered
silk cushion under his head.

"Khee-poo-ah," he snored--"khee-poo-ah."

And the doctors as they came to sit up and went away again did not
notice this disorder. The fact that a strange man was asleep and snoring
in the drawing-room, and the sketches on the walls and the exquisite
decoration of the room, and the fact that the lady of the house was
dishevelled and untidy--all that aroused not the slightest interest now.
One of the doctors chanced to laugh at something, and the laugh had a
strange and timid sound that made one's heart ac he.

When Olga Ivanovna went into the drawing-room next time, Korostelev was
not asleep, but sitting up and smoking.

"He has diphtheria of the nasal cavity," he said in a low voice, "and
the heart is not working properly now. Things are in a bad way, really."

"But you will send for Shrek?" said Olga Ivanovna.

"He has been already. It was he noticed that t