undressed and got into bed, crossing herself and crossing the
air around her. Suddenly the bell rang sharply and plaintively in
the corridor.

"Oh, my God!" she said, feeling a nervous irritation all over her
at the sound. She lay still and kept thinking how poor this provincial
life was in events, monotonous and yet not peaceful. One was
constantly having to tremble, to feel apprehensive, angry or guilty,
and in the end one's nerves were so strained, that one was afraid
to peep out of the bedclothes.

A little while afterwards the bell rang just as sharply again. The
servant must have been asleep and had not heard. Yulia Sergeyevna
lighted a candle, and feeling vexed with the servant, began with a
shiver to dress, and when she went out into the corridor, the maid
was already closing the door downstairs.

"I thought it was the master, but it's some one from a patient,"
she said.

Yulia Sergeyevna went back to her room. She took a pack of cards
out of the chest of drawers, and decided that if after shuffling
the cards well and cutting, the bottom card turned out to be a red
one, it would mean _yes_--that is, she would accept Laptev's
offer; and that if it was a black, it would mean _no_. The card
turned out to be the ten of spades.

That relieved her mind--she fell asleep; but in the morning, she
was wavering again between _yes_ and _no_, and she was dwelling on
the thought that she could, if she chose, change her life. The
thought harassed her, she felt exhausted and unwell; but yet, soon
after eleven, she dressed and went to see Nina Fyodorovna. She
wanted to see Laptev: perhaps now he would seem more attractive to
her; perhaps she had been wrong about him hitherto. . . .

She found it hard to walk against the wind. She struggled along,
holding her hat on with both hands, and could see nothing for the
dust.

IV

Going into his sister's room, and seeing to his surprise Yulia
Sergeyevna, Laptev had again the humiliating sensation of a man who
feels himself an object of repulsion. He concluded that if after
what had happened yesterday she could bring herself so easily to
visit his sister and meet him, it must be because she was not
concerned about him, and regarded him as a complete nonentity. But
when he greeted her, and with a pale face and dust under her eyes
she looked at him mournfully and remorsefully, he saw that she,
too, was miserable.

She did not feel well. She only stayed ten minutes, and began