Yes, Nicolas Naumoff—submissive soul!—has always obeyed.
XXXIII
I was ill in bed for a long time. I lay supine and motionless, feeling—as once, long before—as if I were lying at the bottom of a well. In the distance, far above me, life and the world went whirling on; but nothing in me or of me stirred, except that at every pulse-beat my life-blood seemed to be gently, inexorably ebbing away. The doctors bent over me with anxious faces; on my body I felt the burning weight of ice; my arteries contracted under the grip of ergot and chloride of iron. Still slowly and inexorably I glided, as on a smooth and shallow river, towards death.
Tioka and Grania had been sent to stay with friends in Kharkov.
Naumoff came every day to ask for news, and sent me flowers; but he was never allowed to see me. Kamarowsky had permission to come into my room for ten minutes every morning, but he was not allowed to speak to me.
Prilukoff, locked in my rooms, watched over me night and day.
Nobody knew of his existence, for no one was allowed to enter my apartment. How and when he slept and took his meals I do not know. Perhaps Elise looked after that. He undoubtedly grew thinner, more haggard and spectral every day with sleeplessness, fasting and anxiety.
Night and day he sat at my bedside watching me. Sometimes, as I lay prostrate with closed eyes, I said to myself that I must open them and look at him; but so great seemed the effort of raising my heavy eyelids, that frequently hours passed and I could not do so. When at last I lifted my leaden lashes, I saw him, always sitting motionless beside me with his gaze fixed on my face. With renewed effort I faintly contracted the muscles of my face and attempted to smile at him. Then, worn out with fatigue, I dropped my heavy lids and my soul floated away again towards unconsciousness....
When I began to get better I noticed to my amazement that Prilukoff talked to himself all the time. Perhaps he had done so from the first, but then I was too weak to understand or even to hear him. Now that a little strength was coming back to me each day, I could hear and comprehend the words he uttered; it was a succession of imprecations, of incoherent and disconnected maledictions hurled against Naumoff and Kamarowsky, who as he thought had snatched my heart from him, and would be the ruin and the death of me. I could hear him murmuring: