still and
wait a little, and I'll see how he is going on."

On her return from her husband, Nellie found the doctor lying down.
He was lying on the sofa and muttering.

"Doctor, please! . . . doctor!"

"Eh? Ask Domna!" muttered Stepan Lukitch.

"What?"

"They said at the meeting . . . Vlassov said . . . Who? . . . what?"

And to her horror Nellie saw that the doctor was as delirious as
her husband. What was to be done?

"I must go for the Zemstvo doctor," she decided.

Then again there followed darkness, a cutting cold wind, lumps of
frozen earth. She was suffering in body and in soul, and delusive
nature has no arts, no deceptions to compensate these sufferings. . . .

Then she saw against the grey background how her husband every
spring was in straits for money to pay the interest for the mortgage
to the bank. He could not sleep, she could not sleep, and both
racked their brains till their heads ached, thinking how to avoid
being visited by the clerk of the Court.

She saw her children: the everlasting apprehension of colds, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, bad marks at school, separation. Out of a brood
of five or six one was sure to die.

The grey background was not untouched by death. That might well be.
A husband and wife cannot die simultaneously. Whatever happened one
must bury the other. And Nellie saw her husband dying. This terrible
event presented itself to her in every detail. She saw the coffin,
the candles, the deacon, and even the footmarks in the hall made
by the undertaker.

"Why is it, what is it for?" she asked, looking blankly at her
husband's face.

And all the previous life with her husband seemed to her a stupid
prelude to this.

Something fell from Nellie's hand and knocked on the floor. She
started, jumped up, and opened her eyes wide. One looking-glass she
saw lying at her feet. The other was standing as before on the
table.

She looked into the looking-glass and saw a pale, tear-stained face.
There was no grey background now.

"I must have fallen asleep," she thought with a sigh of relief.

OLD AGE

UZELKOV, an architect with the rank of civil councillor, arrived
in his native town, to which he had been invited to restore the
church in the cemetery. He had been born in the town, had been at
school, had grown up and married in it. But when he got out of the
train he scarcely recognized it. Everything was changed. . . .
Eighteen years ago when he had moved to Petersburg t