“Shall I fetch the doctor?” asked the orderly, standing at attention, and unabashed by the rude answer that he had received.
Tanaroff stretched out his fingers irresolutely.
“I don’t know,” he said in an altered voice, as he again looked round.
Sarudine had heard these words, and was horrified to think that the doctor would see his battered face. “I don’t want anybody,” he murmured feebly, trying to persuade himself and the others that he was going to die.
Cleansed now from blood and dirt, his face was no longer horrible to behold, but called rather for compassion.
From mere animal curiosity Tanaroff hastily glanced at him, and then, in a moment, looked elsewhere. Almost imperceptible as this movement had been, Sarudine noticed it with unutterable anguish and despair. He shut his eyes tighter, and exclaimed, in a broken, tearful voice:
“Leave me! Leave me! Oh! Oh!”
Tanaroff glanced again at him. Suddenly a feeling of irritation and contempt possessed him.
“He’s actually going to cry now!” he thought, with a certain malicious satisfaction.
Sarudine’s eyes were closed, and he lay quite still. Tanaroff drummed lightly on the window-sill with his fingers, twirled his moustache, looked round first, and then, out of the window, feeling selfishly eager to get away.