"No; it's nothing—nothing; it'll pass."
In a week or two the old man was already asking, "Are you ill, Kátya?"
"No, not at all."
Two weeks later the old man said, "You must see the doctor, Kátya."
Kátya begins to consult the doctor; and the old man is entirely at ease because the doctor finds no cause of alarm. "It is only a weakness, some exhaustion"; and he very sensibly ascribed it to weariness, arising from Katerina's style of life the past winter. Every night she had been up at parties till two or three, or even five o'clock, in the morning. "This exhaustion will pass." But it did not pass; it rather increased.
Why did not Katerina Vasílyevna tell her father? She was convinced that this would have been in vain. Her father had told her before very firmly, and he does not speak unmeaning words. He does not like to express opinions about people without being sure of what he says; and he will never consent to her marrying a man whom he considers to be bad.
And so Katerina Vasílyevna kept on dreaming and dreaming while reading Sólovtsof's humble and hopeless letters; and after half a year's such reading, she was within half a step of consumption. And not by a single word could her father perceive that her disease originated from a matter in which he was partly to blame; his daughter had been as tender towards him as before.
"Is there anything that isn't to your mind?"
"Nothing, papa."
And it is evident that there is nothing; she is only out of spirits, but this is from her weakness, from illness. And the doctor declares that it is the result of her illness. But what is the cause of the illness? As soon as the doctor regarded the illness as trifling, he contented himself with laying the blame on dances and corsets; but when he saw that it was getting dangerous, then appeared his "innutrition of the nerves,—atrophia nervorum."
