Olga Ivanovna always called her husband by his surname, as she did all the men of her acquaintance; she disliked his Christian name, Osip, because it reminded her of the Osip in Gogol and the silly pun on his name.  But now she cried: 

“Osip, it cannot be!”

“Send for him; I feel ill,” Dymov said behind the door, and she could hear him go back to the sofa and lie down.  “Send!” she heard his voice faintly.

“Good Heavens!” thought Olga Ivanovna, turning chill with horror.  “Why, it’s dangerous!”

For no reason she took the candle and went into the bedroom, and there, reflecting what she must do, glanced casually at herself in the pier glass.  With her pale, frightened face, in a jacket with sleeves high on the shoulders, with yellow ruches on her bosom, and with stripes running in unusual directions on her skirt, she seemed to herself horrible and disgusting.  She suddenly felt poignantly sorry for Dymov, for his boundless love for her, for his young life, and even for the desolate little bed in which he had not slept for so long; and she remembered his habitual, gentle, submissive smile.  She wept bitterly, and wrote an imploring letter to Korostelev.  It was two o’clock in the night.

VIII

When towards eight o’clock in the morning Olga Ivanovna, her head heavy from want of sleep and her hair unbrushed, came out of her bedroom, looking unattractive and with a guilty expression on her face, a gentleman with a black beard, apparently the doctor, passed by her into the entry.  There was a smell of drugs.  Korostelev was standing near the study door, twisting his left moustache with his right hand.

“Excuse me, I can’t let you go in,” he said surlily to Olga Ivanovna; “it’s catching.  Besides, it’s no use, really; he is delirious, anyway.”

“Has he really got diphtheria?” Olga Ivanovna asked in a whisper.

“People who wantonly risk infection ought to be hauled up and punished for it,” muttered Korostelev, not answering Olga Ivanovna’s question.  “Do you know why he caught it?  On Tuesday he was sucking up the mucus through a pipette from a boy with diphtheria.  And what for?  It was stupid....  Just from folly....”

“Is it dangerous, very?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“Yes; they say it is the malignant form.  We ought to send for Shrek really.”

A little red-haired man with a long nose and a Jewish accent arrived; then a tall, stooping, shaggy individual, who looked like a head deacon; then a stout young man with a red face and spectacles.  These were doctors who came to watch by turns beside their colleague.  Korostelev did not go home when his turn was over, but remained and wandered about the rooms like an uneasy spirit.  The maid kept getting tea for the various doctors, and was constantly running to the chemist, and there was no one to do the rooms.  There was a dismal stillness in the flat.