fretting with impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and
his emaciation. She often looked with involuntary terror at his
changed face. Her position in her parents' house had become
insupportable. Her mother mourned over her, as over the dead, while
her father treated her with contemptuous coldness; the approaching
separation secretly pained him too, but he regarded it as his
duty--the duty of an offended father--to disguise his feelings, his
weakness. Anna Vassilyevna at last expressed a wish to see Insarov. He
was taken up to her secretly by the back stairs. After he had entered
her room, for a long time she could not speak to him, she could not
even bring herself to look at him; he sat down near her chair, and
waited, with quiet respectfulness, for her first word. Elena sat down
close, and held her mother's hand in hers. At last Anna Vassilyevna
raised her eyes, saying: 'God is your judge, Dmitri
Nikanorovitch'--she stopped short: the reproaches died away on her
lips. 'Why, you are ill,' she cried: 'Elena, your husband's ill!'

'I have been unwell, Anna Vassilyevna,' answered Insarov; 'and even
now I am not quite strong yet: but I hope my native air will make me
perfectly well again.'

'Ah--Bulgaria!' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, and she thought: 'Good God,
a Bulgarian, and dying; a voice as hollow as a drum; and eyes like
saucers, a perfect skeleton; his coat hanging loose on his shoulders,
his face as yellow as a guinea, and she's his wife--she loves him--it
must be a bad dream. But----' she checked herself at once: 'Dmitri
Nikanorovitch,' she said, 'are you absolutely, absolutely bound to go
away?'

'Absolutely, Anna Vassilyevna.'