X

Ivan Dmitritch was lying in the same position as on the previous
day, with his head clutched in both hands and his legs drawn up.
His face was not visible.

"Good-day, my friend," said Andrey Yefimitch. "You are not asleep,
are you?"

"In the first place, I am not your friend," Ivan Dmitritch articulated
into the pillow; "and in the second, your efforts are useless; you
will not get one word out of me."

"Strange," muttered Andrey Yefimitch in confusion. "Yesterday we
talked peacefully, but suddenly for some reason you took offence
and broke off all at once. . . . Probably I expressed myself
awkwardly, or perhaps gave utterance to some idea which did not fit
in with your convictions. . . ."

"Yes, a likely idea!" said Ivan Dmitritch, sitting up and looking
at the doctor with irony and uneasiness. His eyes were red. "You
can go and spy and probe somewhere else, it's no use your doing it
here. I knew yesterday what you had come for."

"A strange fancy," laughed the doctor. "So you suppose me to be a
spy?"

"Yes, I do. . . . A spy or a doctor who has been charged to test
me--it's all the same ----"

"Oh excuse me, what a queer fellow you are really!"

The doctor sat down on the stool near the bed and shook his head
reproachfully.

"But let us suppose you are right," he said, "let us suppose that
I am treacherously trying to trap you into saying something so as
to betray you to the police. You would be arrested and then tried.
But would you be any worse off being tried and in prison than you
are here? If you are banished to a settlement, or even sent to penal
servitude, would it be worse than being shut up in this ward? I
imagine it would be no worse. . . . What, then, are you afraid of?"

These words evidently had an effect on Ivan Dmitritch. He sat down
quietly.

It was between four and five in the afternoon--the time when
Andrey Yefimitch usually walked up and down his rooms, and Daryushka
asked whether it was not time for his beer. It was a still, bright
day.

"I came out for a walk after dinner, and here I have come, as you
see," said the doctor. "It is quite spring."

"What month is it? March?" asked Ivan Dmitritch.

"Yes, the end of March."

"Is it very muddy?"

"No, not very. There are already paths in the garden."

"It would be nice now to drive in an open carriage somewhere into
the country," said Ivan Dmitritch, rubbing his red eyes as though
he were just awake, "then to come home t