“Yes.”

“It’s she who has sent the bread.  She is absurd really, what is the use of being so secret?  I used to be absurd and foolish, but now I have got away from that and am afraid of nobody.  I think and say aloud what I like, and am happy.  When I lived at home I hadn’t a conception of happiness, and now I wouldn’t change with a queen.”

Dr. Blagovo arrived.  He had taken his doctor’s degree, and was now staying in our town with his father; he was taking a rest, and said that he would soon go back to Petersburg again.  He wanted to study anti-toxins against typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go abroad to perfect his training, and then to be appointed a professor.  He had already left the army service, and wore a roomy serge reefer jacket, very full trousers, and magnificent neckties.  My sister was in ecstasies over his scarfpin, his studs, and the red silk handkerchief which he wore, I suppose from foppishness, sticking out of the breast pocket of his jacket.  One day, having nothing to do, she and I counted up all the suits we remembered him wearing, and came to the conclusion that he had at least ten.  It was clear that he still loved my sister as before, but he never once even in jest spoke of taking her with him to Petersburg or abroad, and I could not picture to myself clearly what would become of her if she remained alive and what would become of her child.  She did nothing but dream endlessly, and never thought seriously of the future; she said he might go where he liked, and might abandon her even, so long as he was happy himself; that what had been was enough for her.

As a rule he used to sound her very carefully on his arrival, and used to insist on her taking milk and drops in his presence.  It was the same on this occasion.  He sounded her and made her drink a glass of milk, and there was a smell of creosote in our room afterwards.

“That’s a good girl,” he said, taking the glass from her.  “You mustn’t talk too much now; you’ve taken to chattering like a magpie of late.  Please hold your tongue.”

She laughed.  Then he came into Radish’s room where I was sitting and affectionately slapped me on the shoulder.

“Well, how goes it, old man?” he said, bending down to the invalid.

“Your honour,” said Radish, moving his lips slowly, “your honour, I venture to submit. . . .  We all walk in the fear of God, we all have to die. . . .  Permit me to tell you the truth. . . .  Your honour, the Kingdom of Heaven will not be for you!”

“There’s no help for it,” the doctor said jestingly; “there must be somebody in hell, you know.”

And all at once something happened with my consciousness; as though I were in a dream, as though I were standing on a winter night in the slaughterhouse yard, and Prokofy beside me, smelling of pepper cordial; I made an effort to control myself, and rubbed my eyes, and at once it seemed to me that I was going along the road to the interview with the Governor.  Nothing of the sort had happened to me before, or has happened to me since, and these strange memories that were like dreams, I ascribed to overexhaustion of my nerves.  I lived through the scene at the slaughterhouse, and the interview with the Governor, and at the same time was dimly aware that it was not real.