Olga Ivanovna sat in her bedroom and thought that God was punishing her for having deceived her husband.  That silent, unrepining, uncomprehended creature, robbed by his mildness of all personality and will, weak from excessive kindness, had been suffering in obscurity somewhere on his sofa, and had not complained.  And if he were to complain even in delirium, the doctors watching by his bedside would learn that diphtheria was not the only cause of his sufferings.  They would ask Korostelev.  He knew all about it, and it was not for nothing that he looked at his friend’s wife with eyes that seemed to say that she was the real chief criminal and diphtheria was only her accomplice.  She did not think now of the moonlight evening on the Volga, nor the words of love, nor their poetical life in the peasant’s hut.  She thought only that from an idle whim, from self-indulgence, she had sullied herself all over from head to foot in something filthy, sticky, which one could never wash off....

“Oh, how fearfully false I’ve been!” she thought, recalling the troubled passion she had known with Ryabovsky.  “Curse it all!...”

At four o’clock she dined with Korostelev.  He did nothing but scowl and drink red wine, and did not eat a morsel.  She ate nothing, either.  At one minute she was praying inwardly and vowing to God that if Dymov recovered she would love him again and be a faithful wife to him.  Then, forgetting herself for a minute, she would look at Korostelev, and think:  “Surely it must be dull to be a humble, obscure person, not remarkable in any way, especially with such a wrinkled face and bad manners!”

Then it seemed to her that God would strike her dead that minute for not having once been in her husband’s study, for fear of infection.  And altogether she had a dull, despondent feeling and a conviction that her life was spoilt, and that there was no setting it right anyhow....

After dinner darkness came on.  When Olga Ivanovna went into the drawing-room Korostelev was asleep on the sofa, with a gold-embroidered silk cushion under his head.

“Khee-poo-ah,” he snored—­“khee-poo-ah.”

And the doctors as they came to sit up and went away again did not notice this disorder.  The fact that a strange man was asleep and snoring in the drawing-room, and the sketches on the walls and the exquisite decoration of the room, and the fact that the lady of the house was dishevelled and untidy—­all that aroused not the slightest interest now.  One of the doctors chanced to laugh at something, and the laugh had a strange and timid sound that made one’s heart ac he.

When Olga Ivanovna went into the drawing-room next time, Korostelev was not asleep, but sitting up and smoking.

“He has diphtheria of the nasal cavity,” he said in a low voice, “and the heart is not working properly now.  Things are in a bad way, really.”

“But you will send for Shrek?” said Olga Ivanovna.