enjoy the peaceful life of her former situation, and she gave it up.
That was about two years and a half since her parting from Kirsánof. They had not seen each other at all during this time. He called upon her, but the happiness of the meeting affected her so unfavorably that he begged her not to let him call upon her for her own sake. Nástenka tried to live as chambermaid in two or three families, but everywhere she found so many worriments and unpleasantnesses, that it seemed better for her to become a seamstress, though it was a direct step towards the development of her disease; the disease would have been developed from any such trying position, and so it would be better for her to be subjected to such a fate, but without the unpleasantness, and only from her own work. A year of sewing entirely undermined Nástenka's health. When she entered Viéra Pavlovna's union, Lopukhóf, who was then the doctor for the shop, did everything possible to stop the development of the consumption; he did a great deal, that is, so far as a man with so little real knowledge of medicine can do. But the end was at hand.
Nástenka had enjoyed the delusion universal among those who suffer from consumption, imagining that her disease was not very far advanced, and so she did not seek to see Kirsánof; but for the last two months she had persistently asked Lopukhóf whether she had long to live. Why she wanted to know, she did not say, and Lopukhóf did not feel that he had the right to tell her plainly about the approaching crisis, for he did not see in her question anything more than the universal attachment to human life. He tried to calm her; but she, as it often happens, could not be contented, for she kept aloof from that which might have given her days a glimpse of happiness; but now she herself saw that she had not long to live, and her feelings were dominated by this thought: but the doctor assured her that she must take care of herself. She knew that she had to believe more in him than in her own hopes, and therefore she did not look to see Kirsánof.
Of course this doubt could not last long. According as her last days approached, Nástenka's questions became more persistent; she either would have said that she had a particular reason for knowing the truth, or Lopukhóf and Viéra Pavlovna would have guessed that she had a particular
