“No,” said Natalya Gavrilovna quickly, touching his hand.  “Stay another quarter of an hour....  Please do!”

Evidently she did not wish to be left alone with me without a witness.

“Oh, well, I’ll wait a quarter of an hour, too,” I thought.

“Why, it’s snowing!” I said, getting up and looking out of window.  “A good fall of snow!  Ivan Ivanitch”—­I went on walking about the room—­“I do regret not being a sportsman.  I can imagine what a pleasure it must be coursing hares or hunting wolves in snow like this!”

My wife, standing still, watched my movements, looking out of the corner of her eyes without turning her head.  She looked as though she thought I had a sharp knife or a revolver in my pocket.

“Ivan Ivanitch, do take me out hunting some day,” I went on softly.  “I shall be very, very grateful to you.”

At that moment a visitor came into the room.  He was a tall, thick-set gentleman whom I did not know, with a bald head, a big fair beard, and little eyes.  From his baggy, crumpled clothes and his manners I took him to be a parish clerk or a teacher, but my wife introduced him to me as Dr. Sobol.

“Very, very glad to make your acquaintance,” said the doctor in a loud tenor voice, shaking hands with me warmly, with a naive smile.  “Very glad!”

He sat down at the table, took a glass of tea, and said in a loud voice: 

“Do you happen to have a drop of rum or brandy?  Have pity on me, Olya, and look in the cupboard; I am frozen,” he said, addressing the maid.

I sat down by the fire again, looked on, listened, and from time to time put in a word in the general conversation.  My wife smiled graciously to the visitors and kept a sharp lookout on me, as though I were a wild beast.  She was oppressed by my presence, and this aroused in me jealousy, annoyance, and an obstinate desire to wound her.  “Wife, these snug rooms, the place by the fire,” I thought, “are mine, have been mine for years, but some crazy Ivan Ivanitch or Sobol has for some reason more right to them than I. Now I see my wife, not out of window, but close at hand, in ordinary home surroundings that I feel the want of now I am growing older, and, in spite of her hatred for me, I miss her as years ago in my childhood I used to miss my mother and my nurse.  And I feel that now, on the verge of old age, my love for her is purer and loftier than it was in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her, to stamp hard on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do it.”

“Monsieur Marten,” I said, addressing the doctor, “how many hospitals have we in the district?”

“Sobol,” my wife corrected.

“Two,” answered Sobol.

“And how many deaths are there every year in each hospital?”

“Pavel Andreitch, I want to speak to you,” said my wife.

She apologized to the visitors and went to the next room.  I got up and followed her.