“Excuse me, where is the patient?” he said.

“The patient!  The patient!” cried Abogin, laughing, crying, and still brandishing his fists.  “She is not ill, but accursed!  The baseness!  The vileness!  The devil himself could not have imagined anything more loathsome!  She sent me off that she might run away with a buffoon, a dull-witted clown, an Alphonse!  Oh God, better she had died!  I cannot bear it!  I cannot bear it!”

The doctor drew himself up.  His eyes blinked and filled with tears, his narrow beard began moving to right and to left together with his jaw.

“Allow me to ask what’s the meaning of this?” he asked, looking round him with curiosity.  “My child is dead, my wife is in grief alone in the whole house. . . .  I myself can scarcely stand up, I have not slept for three nights. . . .  And here I am forced to play a part in some vulgar farce, to play the part of a stage property!  I don’t . . . don’t understand it!”

Abogin unclenched one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor, and stamped on it as though it were an insect he wanted to crush.

“And I didn’t see, didn’t understand,” he said through his clenched teeth, brandishing one fist before his face with an expression as though some one had trodden on his corns.  “I did not notice that he came every day!  I did not notice that he came today in a closed carriage!  What did he come in a closed carriage for?  And I did not see it!  Noodle!”

“I don’t understand . . .” muttered the doctor.  “Why, what’s the meaning of it?  Why, it’s an outrage on personal dignity, a mockery of human suffering!  It’s incredible. . . .  It’s the first time in my life I have had such an experience!”

With the dull surprise of a man who has only just realized that he has been bitterly insulted the doctor shrugged his shoulders, flung wide his arms, and not knowing what to do or to say sank helplessly into a chair.

“If you have ceased to love me and love another—­so be it; but why this deceit, why this vulgar, treacherous trick?” Abogin said in a tearful voice.  “What is the object of it?  And what is there to justify it?  And what have I done to you?  Listen, doctor,” he said hotly, going up to Kirilov.  “You have been the involuntary witness of my misfortune and I am not going to conceal the truth from you.  I swear that I loved the woman, loved her devotedly, like a slave!  I have sacrificed everything for her; I have quarrelled with my own people, I have given up the service and music, I have forgiven her what I could not have forgiven my own mother or sister . . .  I have never looked askance at her. . . .  I have never gainsaid her in anything.  Why this deception?  I do not demand love, but why this loathsome duplicity?  If she did not love me, why did she not say so openly, honestly, especially as she knows my views on the subject? . . .”