"Oh, dear!" cried Nadya, in agitation. "Why don't you go to a doctor?
Why don't you take care of your health? My dear, darling Sasha,"
she said, and tears gushed from her eyes and for some reason there
rose before her imagination Andrey Andreitch and the naked lady
with the vase, and all her past which seemed now as far away as her
childhood; and she began crying because Sasha no longer seemed to
her so novel, so cultured, and so interesting as the year before.
"Dear Sasha, you are very, very ill . . . I would do anything to
make you not so pale and thin. I am so indebted to you! You can't
imagine how much you have done for me, my good Sasha! In reality
you are now the person nearest and dearest to me."

They sat on and talked, and now, after Nadya had spent a winter in
Petersburg, Sasha, his works, his smile, his whole figure had for
her a suggestion of something out of date, old-fashioned, done with
long ago and perhaps already dead and buried.

"I am going down the Volga the day after tomorrow," said Sasha,
"and then to drink koumiss. I mean to drink koumiss. A friend and
his wife are going with me. His wife is a wonderful woman; I am
always at her, trying to persuade her to go to the university. I
want her to turn her life upside down."

After having talked they drove to the station. Sasha got her tea
and apples; and when the train began moving and he waved his
handkerchief at her, smiling, it could be seen even from his legs
that he was very ill and would not live long.

Nadya reached her native town at midday. As she drove home from the