ape. . . .

The nearer the carriage got to its goal the more impatient Abogin
became. He kept moving, leaping up, looking over the coachman's
shoulder. And when at last the carriage stopped before the entrance,
which was elegantly curtained with striped linen, and when he looked
at the lighted windows of the second storey there was an audible
catch in his breath.

"If anything happens . . . I shall not survive it," he said, going
into the hall with the doctor, and rubbing his hands in agitation.
"But there is no commotion, so everything must be going well so
far," he added, listening in the stillness.

There was no sound in the hall of steps or voices and all the house
seemed asleep in spite of the lighted windows. Now the doctor and
Abogin, who till then had been in darkness, could see each other
clearly. The doctor was tall and stooped, was untidily dressed and
not good-looking. There was an unpleasantly harsh, morose, and
unfriendly look about his lips, thick as a negro's, his aquiline
nose, and listless, apathetic eyes. His unkempt head and sunken
temples, the premature greyness of his long, narrow beard through
which his chin was visible, the pale grey hue of his skin and his
careless, uncouth manners--the harshness of all this was suggestive
of years of poverty, of ill fortune, of weariness with life and
with men. Looking at his frigid figure one could hardly believe
that this man had a wife, that he was capable of weeping over his
child. Abogin presented a very different appearance. He was a
thick-set, sturdy-looking, fair man with a big head and large, soft
features; he was elegantly dressed in the very latest fashion. In
his carriage, his closely buttoned coat, his long hair, and his
face there was a suggestion of something generous, leonine; he
walked with his head erect and his chest squared, he spoke in an
agreeable baritone, and there was a shade of refined almost feminine
elegance in the manner in which he took off his scarf and smoothed
his hair. Even his paleness and the childlike terror with which he
looked up at the stairs as he took off his coat did not detract
from his dignity nor diminish the air of sleekness, health, and
aplomb which characterized his whole figure.

"There is nobody and no sound," he said going up the stairs. "There
is no commotion. God grant all is well."

He led the doctor through the hall into a big drawing-room where
there was a black piano and a chandelier in a white co