ink...."

She tore herself away at last; he let her go, promising her to go to bed
at once. As they parted he complained that he had a bad headache. Sofya
Matveyevna had on entering the cottage left her bag and things in the
first room, meaning to spend the night with the people of the house; but
she got no rest.

In the night Stepan Trofimovitch was attacked by the malady with which
I and all his friends were so familiar--the summer cholera, which was
always the outcome of any nervous strain or moral shock with him. Poor
Sofya Matveyevna did not sleep all night. As in waiting on the invalid
she was obliged pretty often to go in and out of the cottage through the
landlady's room, the latter, as well as the travellers who were sleeping
there, grumbled and even began swearing when towards morning she set
about preparing the samovar. Stepan Trofimovitch was half unconscious
all through the attack; at times he had a vision of the samovar being
set, of some one giving him something to drink (raspberry tea), and
putting something warm to his stomach and his chest. But he felt almost
every instant that she was here, beside him; that it was she going out
and coming in, lifting him off the bed and settling him in it again.
Towards three o'clock in the morning he began to be easier; he sat up,
put his legs out of bed and thinking of nothing he fell on the floor
at her feet. This was a very different matter from the kneeling of the
evening; he simply bowed down at her feet and kissed the hem of her
dress.

"Don't, sir, I am not worth it," she faltered, trying to get him back on
to the bed.

"My saviour," he cried, clasping his hands reverently before her. "_Vous
etes noble comme une marquise!_ I--I am a wretch. Oh, I've been dishonest
all my life...."

"Calm yourself!" Sofya Matveyevna implored him.

"It was all lies that I told you this evening--to glorify myself, to
make it splendid, from pure wantonness--all, all, every word, oh, I am a
wretch, I am a wretch!"

The first attack was succeeded in this way by a second--an attack
of hysterical remorse. I have mentioned these attacks already when I
described his letters to Varvara Petrovna. He suddenly recalled Lise
and their meeting the previous morning. "It was so awful, and there must
have been some disaster and I didn't ask, didn't find out! I thought
only of myself. Oh, what's the matter with her? Do you know what's the
matter with her?" he besought Sofya Matveyevna.