ums over into another corner where the flowers were. He called the lackey; either his daughter or his wife came to his assistance. They did not agree with him, they contradicted him; he wrangled, got angry, but it all did him good, because he had forgotten all about it, it was not visible.
But then his wife said, just when he was moving the things about with his own hands: "Allow me, let the servants do it, you will only do yourself harm again," and immediately it flashed through the screen, he saw it. It flashed through, and yet he made believe that it was hidden, but involuntarily he became attentive to his side again—there sat all the same old thing with the same dull old pain, and he could forget no longer, and it was plainly looking at him from behind the flowers. What was the good of it all?
"Yes, no doubt of it, on this curtain, just as much as if I had been storming a breach, did I lose my life. Can it be possible? How horrible and how stupid! It cannot be! It cannot be, yet it is."
He went into his cabinet, lay down, and once more was alone with it. Eye to eye with it, and to come to terms with it— impossible. He could only look at it and grow cold.
VII.
How it happened in the third month of the illness of Ivan Il'ich it is impossible to say, because it happened insensibly, step by step, but at any rate this thing did happen: his wife, his daughter, his
