the same thing over and over again. All this lonely misery was terrible; he would have liked to send for someone or other, but he knew beforehand that it was still worse when other people were with him. "If only I might have some more morphine, I might forget about it I shall tell the doctor that he must invent something else. To go on like this is impossible, quite impossible."
An hour or two passed in this way. But now there came a ring at the vestibule. The doctor perhaps? Yes, it was the doctor — fresh, brisk, plump, merry, with that sort of expression which says: Ah! ha! we are a little bit nervous, eh? but we'll very soon put all that to rights. The doctor knows that this expression is quite out of place here, but he has put it on once for all and cannot lay it aside again, like a man who has put on a frock-coat in the morning to go visiting.
The doctor came in rubbing his hands in a brisk, encouraging fashion.
"I'm cold, there's a healthy frost to-day; let me warm myself a bit," he exclaimed, as much as to say you must wait a little bit till I have warmed myself, and when once I have warmed myself I'll very soon put things to rights.
"Well now, how are we ?"
Ivan Il'ich felt that what the doctor really wanted to say was: How is our little affair going on? but that feeling it was impossible to say this he said instead: How are we getting on? by which he meant to say: What sort of a night have you had?
Ivan Il'ich looked at the doctor with an expression
