as he went out of the bedroom. "If your daughter is being attended
by the factory doctor, let him go on attending her. The treatment
so far has been perfectly correct, and I see no reason for changing
your doctor. Why change? It's such an ordinary trouble; there's
nothing seriously wrong."

He spoke deliberately as he put on his gloves, while Madame Lyalikov
stood without moving, and looked at him with her tearful eyes.

"I have half an hour to catch the ten o'clock train," he said. "I
hope I am not too late."

"And can't you stay?" she asked, and tears trickled down her cheeks
again. "I am ashamed to trouble you, but if you would be so good
. . . . For God's sake," she went on in an undertone, glancing towards
the door, "do stay to-night with us! She is all I have . . . my
only daughter. . . . She frightened me last night; I can't get over
it. . . . Don't go away, for goodness' sake! . . ."

He wanted to tell her that he had a great deal of work in Moscow,
that his family were expecting him home; it was disagreeable to him
to spend the evening and the whole night in a strange house quite
needlessly; but he looked at her face, heaved a sigh, and began
taking off his gloves without a word.

All the lamps and candles were lighted in his honour in the
drawing-room and the dining-room. He sat down at the piano and began
turning over the music. Then he looked at the pictures on the walls,
at the portraits. The pictures, oil-paintings in gold frames, were
views of the Crimea--a stormy sea with a ship, a Catholic monk