"Wait, granny, I'll be silent soon."
Losing breath every once in a while, enunciating the words with a mighty effort, he continued his talk, interrupted by long spells of faintness.
"It's splendid to have you with me. It's pleasant to see your face, granny, and your eyes so alert, and your naïveté. 'How will it end?' I ask myself. It's sad to think that the prison, exile, and all sorts of vile outrages await you as everybody else. Are you afraid of prison?"
"No," answered the mother softly.
"But after all the prison is a mean place. It's the prison that knocked me up. To tell you the truth, I don't want to die."
"Maybe you won't die yet," the mother was about to say, but a look at his face froze the words on her lips.
"If I hadn't gotten sick I could have worked yet, not badly; but if you can't work there's nothing to live for, and it's stupid to live."
"That's true, but it's no consolation." Andrey's words flashed into the mother's mind, and she heaved a deep sigh. She was greatly fatigued by the day, and hungry. The monotonous, humid, hoarse whisper of the sick man filled the room and crept helplessly along the smooth, cold, shining walls. At the windows the dark tops of the lime trees trembled quietly. It was growing dusk, and Yegor's face on the pillow turned dark.
"How bad I feel," he said. He closed his eyes and became silent. The mother listened to his breathing, looked around, and sat for a few minutes motionless, seized by a cold sensation of sadness. Finally she dozed off.
The muffled sound of a door being carefully shut awakened her, and she saw the kind, open eyes of Yegor.