show of carelessness,
'my daughter, through the higher education, has gone and married a
student.' The general looked at him through his spectacles, muttered,
'H'm!' and asked him what stakes would he play for.

XXXII

The day of departure drew near. November was already over; the latest
date for starting had come. Insarov had long ago made his preparations,
and was burning with anxiety to get out of Moscow as soon as possible.
And the doctor was urging him on. 'You need a warm climate,' he told
him; 'you will not get well here.' Elena, too, was fretting with
impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and his emaciation. She
often looked with involuntary terror at his changed face. Her position
in her parents' house had become insupportable. Her mother mourned over
her, as over the dead, while her father treated her with contemptuous
coldness; the approaching separation secretly pained him too, but he
regarded it as his duty--the duty of an offended father--to disguise his
feelings, his weakness. Anna Vassilyevna at last expressed a wish to see
Insarov. He was taken up to her secretly by the back stairs. After he
had entered her room, for a long time she could not speak to him, she
could not even bring herself to look at him; he sat down near her chair,
and waited, with quiet respectfulness, for her first word. Elena sat
down close, and held her mother's hand in hers. At last Anna Vassilyevna
raised her eyes, saying: 'God is your judge, Dmitri Nikanorovitch'--she
stopped short: the reproaches died away on her lips. 'Why, you are ill,'
she cried: 'Elena, your husband's ill!'

'I have been unwell, Anna Vassilyevna,' answered Insarov; 'and even
now I am not quite strong yet: but I hope my native air will make me
perfectly well again.'

'Ah--Bulgaria!' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, and she thought: 'Good God,
a Bulgarian, and dying; a voice as hollow as a drum; and eyes like
saucers, a perfect skeleton; his coat hanging loose on his shoulders,
his face as yellow as a guinea, and she's his wife--she loves him--it
must be a bad dream. But----' she checked herself at once: 'Dmitri
Nikanorovitch,' she said, 'are you absolutely, absolutely bound to go
away?'

'Absolutely, Anna Vassilyevna.'

Anna Vassilyevna looked at him.

'Ah, Dmitri Nikanorovitch, God grant you never have to go through what
I am going through now. But you will promise me to take care of her--to
love her. You will not have to face poverty