"Tell them, my good fellow, that I can't come to-day; I am very
busy. Say I will come in three days or so."

But three days passed, a week passed; he still did not go. Happening
once to drive past the Turkins' house, he thought he must go in,
if only for a moment, but on second thoughts . . . did not go in.

And he never went to the Turkins' again.

V

Several more years have passed. Startsev has grown stouter still,
has grown corpulent, breathes heavily, and already walks with his
head thrown back. When stout and red in the face, he drives with
his bells and his team of three horses, and Panteleimon, also stout
and red in the face with his thick beefy neck, sits on the box,
holding his arms stiffly out before him as though they were made
of wood, and shouts to those he meets: "Keep to the ri-i-ight!" it
is an impressive picture; one might think it was not a mortal, but
some heathen deity in his chariot. He has an immense practice in
the town, no time to breathe, and already has an estate and two
houses in the town, and he is looking out for a third more profitable;
and when at the Mutual Credit Bank he is told of a house that is
for sale, he goes to the house without ceremony, and, marching
through all the rooms, regardless of half-dressed women and children
who gaze at him in amazement and alarm, he prods at the doors with
his stick, and says:

"Is that the study? Is that a bedroom? And what's here?"

And as he does so he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his
brow.

He has a great deal to do, but still he does not give up his work
as district doctor; he is greedy for gain, and he tries to be in
all places at once. At Dyalizh and in the town he is called simply
"Ionitch": "Where is Ionitch off to?" or "Should not we call in
Ionitch to a consultation?"

Probably because his throat is covered with rolls of fat, his voice
has changed; it has become thin and sharp. His temper has changed,
too: he has grown ill-humoured and irritable. When he sees his
patients he is usually out of temper; he impatiently taps the floor
with his stick, and shouts in his disagreeable voice:

"Be so good as to confine yourself to answering my questions! Don't
talk so much!"

He is solitary. He leads a dreary life; nothing interests him.

During all the years he had lived at Dyalizh his love for Kitten
had been his one joy, and probably his last. In the evenings he
plays _vint_ at the club, and then sits alone at a big t