But Nellie scarcely heard the cook.  Thrusting her aside, she rushed headlong into the doctor’s house.  Running through some dark and stuffy rooms, upsetting two or three chairs, she at last reached the doctor’s bedroom.  Stepan Lukitch was lying on his bed, dressed, but without his coat, and with pouting lips was breathing into his open hand.  A little night-light glimmered faintly beside him.  Without uttering a word Nellie sat down and began to cry.  She wept bitterly, shaking all over.

“My husband is ill!” she sobbed out.  Stepan Lukitch was silent.  He slowly sat up, propped his head on his hand, and looked at his visitor with fixed, sleepy eyes.  “My husband is ill!” Nellie continued, restraining her sobs.  “For mercy’s sake come quickly.  Make haste. . . .  Make haste!”

“Eh?” growled the doctor, blowing into his hand.

“Come!  Come this very minute!  Or . . . it’s terrible to think!  For mercy’s sake!”

And pale, exhausted Nellie, gasping and swallowing her tears, began describing to the doctor her husband’s illness, her unutterable terror.  Her sufferings would have touched the heart of a stone, but the doctor looked at her, blew into his open hand, and—­not a movement.

“I’ll come to-morrow!” he muttered.

“That’s impossible!” cried Nellie.  “I know my husband has typhus!  At once . . . this very minute you are needed!”

“I . . . er . . . have only just come in,” muttered the doctor.  “For the last three days I’ve been away, seeing typhus patients, and I’m exhausted and ill myself. . . .  I simply can’t!  Absolutely!  I’ve caught it myself!  There!”

And the doctor thrust before her eyes a clinical thermometer.

“My temperature is nearly forty. . . .  I absolutely can’t.  I can scarcely sit up.  Excuse me.  I’ll lie down. . . .”

The doctor lay down.

“But I implore you, doctor,” Nellie moaned in despair.  “I beseech you!  Help me, for mercy’s sake!  Make a great effort and come!  I will repay you, doctor!”

“Oh, dear! . . .  Why, I have told you already.  Ah!”

Nellie leapt up and walked nervously up and down the bedroom.  She longed to explain to the doctor, to bring him to reason. . . .  She thought if only he knew how dear her husband was to her and how unhappy she was, he would forget his exhaustion and his illness.  But how could she be eloquent enough?

“Go to the Zemstvo doctor,” she heard Stepan Lukitch’s voice.

“That’s impossible!  He lives more than twenty miles from here, and time is precious.  And the horses can’t stand it.  It is thirty miles from us to you, and as much from here to the Zemstvo doctor.  No, it’s impossible!  Come along, Stepan Lukitch.  I ask of you an heroic deed.  Come, perform that heroic deed!  Have pity on us!”

“It’s beyond everything. . . .  I’m in a fever . . . my head’s in a whirl . . . and she won’t understand!  Leave me alone!”