“Yes, I will do it...  But it is an impossible thing for you to die...  Think only!  Where would divine justice be after that?”

“I know nothing about that; only you send the messenger.”

He turned his face painfully to the wall, while Vassily Ivanovitch went out of the study, and, struggling as far as his wife’s bedroom, simply dropped down on to his knees before the holy pictures.

“Pray, Arina, pray for us,” he murmured.  “Our son is dying.”

Bazaroff got worse every hour.  He was in the agonies of high fever.  His mother and father watched over him, combing his hair and giving him gulps of tea.  The old man was tormented by a special anguish.  He wished his son to take the sacrament, though, knowing his attitude towards religion, he dared not ask him.  At last he could keep back the words no longer.  As in a broken voice he begged his son to see a priest, a strange look came over Bazaroff’s face.

“I won’t refuse if that can be any comfort to you, but I’ll wait a little.”

There was the sound of carriage wheels outside.  Vassily Ivanovitch rushed to the door.  A lady in a black veil and a black mantle, accompanied by a little German doctor in spectacles, got out of the carriage.

“I am Madame Odintsov,” said the lady.  “Your son is still living?  I have a doctor with me.”

“Benefactress!” cried Vassily Ivanovitch, snatching her hand and placing it convulsively to his lips.  “Still living; my Yevgeny is living, and now he will be saved!  Wife! wife!...  An angel from heaven has come to us.”

But when the doctor came out from examining his patient he breathed the news that there was no hope, and Vassily Ivanovitch conducted Madame Odintsov to his son’s room.  As she looked at Bazaroff she felt simply dismayed, with a sort of cold and suffocating dismay; the thought that she would not have felt like that if she had really loved him flashed instantaneously through her brain.

“Thanks,” said Bazaroff from the bed.  “I did not expect this.  It’s a deed of mercy.  So we have seen each other again as you promised....  I loved you! there was no sense in that even before, and less than ever now.  Love is a form, and my own form is already breaking up.”

Madame Odintsov gave an involuntary shudder.

“Noble-hearted!” he whispered.  “Oh, how young and fresh and pure... in this loathsome room!  Well, good-bye....  I thought I wouldn’t die; I’d break down so many things.  I wouldn’t die; why should I?  There were problems to solve, and I was a giant!  And now all the problem for the giant is how to die decently....  My father will tell you what a man Russia is losing....  That’s nonsense, but don’t contradict the old man.  Whatever toy will comfort a child... you know.  And be kind to mother.  People like them are not to be found in your great world....  I was needed by Russia....  No, it’s clear I wasn’t needed.  And who is needed?”