“But you are in duty bound to come!  You cannot refuse to come!  It’s egoism!  A man is bound to sacrifice his life for his neighbour, and you . . . you refuse to come!  I will summon you before the Court.”

Nellie felt that she was uttering a false and undeserved insult, but for her husband’s sake she was capable of forgetting logic, tact, sympathy for others. . . .  In reply to her threats, the doctor greedily gulped a glass of cold water.  Nellie fell to entreating and imploring like the very lowest beggar. . . .  At last the doctor gave way.  He slowly got up, puffing and panting, looking for his coat.

“Here it is!” cried Nellie, helping him.  “Let me put it on to you.  Come along!  I will repay you. . . .  All my life I shall be grateful to you. . . .”

But what agony!  After putting on his coat the doctor lay down again.  Nellie got him up and dragged him to the hall.  Then there was an agonizing to-do over his goloshes, his overcoat. . . .  His cap was lost. . . .  But at last Nellie was in the carriage with the doctor.  Now they had only to drive thirty miles and her husband would have a doctor’s help.  The earth was wrapped in darkness.  One could not see one’s hand before one’s face. . . .  A cold winter wind was blowing.  There were frozen lumps under their wheels.  The coachman was continually stopping and wondering which road to take.

Nellie and the doctor sat silent all the way.  It was fearfully jolting, but they felt neither the cold nor the jolts.

“Get on, get on!” Nellie implored the driver.

At five in the morning the exhausted horses drove into the yard.  Nellie saw the familiar gates, the well with the crane, the long row of stables and barns.  At last she was at home.

“Wait a moment, I will be back directly,” she said to Stepan Lukitch, making him sit down on the sofa in the dining-room.  “Sit still and wait a little, and I’ll see how he is going on.”

On her return from her husband, Nellie found the doctor lying down.  He was lying on the sofa and muttering.

“Doctor, please! . . . doctor!”

“Eh?  Ask Domna!” muttered Stepan Lukitch.

“What?”

“They said at the meeting . . .  Vlassov said . . .  Who? . . . what?”

And to her horror Nellie saw that the doctor was as delirious as her husband.  What was to be done?

“I must go for the Zemstvo doctor,” she decided.

Then again there followed darkness, a cutting cold wind, lumps of frozen earth.  She was suffering in body and in soul, and delusive nature has no arts, no deceptions to compensate these sufferings. . . .

Then she saw against the grey background how her husband every spring was in straits for money to pay the interest for the mortgage to the bank.  He could not sleep, she could not sleep, and both racked their brains till their heads ached, thinking how to avoid being visited by the clerk of the Court.