“At first a hundred . . .” Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said to him, “then another hundred . . .”
“You ought to take some quinine,” he said, and thought, “To-morrow is Wednesday; the steamer goes and I am not going in it. So I shall have to go on living here till Saturday.”
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna knelt up in bed.
“I didn’t say anything just now, did I?” she asked, smiling and screwing up her eyes at the light.
“No, nothing. We shall have to send for the doctor to-morrow morning. Go to sleep.”
He took his pillow and went to the door. Ever since he had finally made up his mind to go away and leave Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, she had begun to raise in him pity and a sense of guilt; he felt a little ashamed in her presence, as though in the presence of a sick or old horse whom one has decided to kill. He stopped in the doorway and looked round at her.
“I was out of humour at the picnic and said something rude to you. Forgive me, for God’s sake!”
Saying this, he went off to his study, lay down, and for a long while could not get to sleep.
Next morning when Samoylenko, attired, as it was a holiday, in full-dress uniform with epaulettes on his shoulders and decorations on his breast, came out of the bedroom after feeling Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s pulse and looking at her tongue, Laevsky, who was standing in the doorway, asked him anxiously: “Well? Well?”
There was an expression of terror, of extreme uneasiness, and of hope on his face.