Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/74

 Iván Ilích looks at her, examines her whole figure, and finds fault with the whiteness, chubbiness, and cleanliness of her hands and neck, the gloss of her hair, and the sparkle of her vivacious eyes. He hates her with the whole strength of his soul. Her touch makes him suffer from an access of hatred toward her.

Her relation to him and his sickness is still the same. As the doctor had worked out for himself a relation to his patients, which he was unable to divest himself of, so she had worked out a certain relation to him,—that he was somehow not doing what he ought to do, and was himself to blame for it, and she lovingly reproached him for it,—and was unable to divest herself of this relation to him.

"Well, he pays no attention. He does not take the medicine on time. Above all else, he lies down in a position which, no doubt, is injurious to him,—with his legs up."

She told the doctor how he made Gerásim hold up his legs.

The doctor smiled a contemptuously kind smile:

"Well, what is to be done? These patients at times invent such foolish things,—but we can forgive them."

When the examination was ended, the doctor looked at his watch, and Praskóvya Fédorovna announced to Iván Ilích that she did not care what he would do, but she had sent for a famous doctor, who in company with Mikhaíl Danílovich (so the ordinary doctor was called) would make an examination and have a consultation.

"Don't object to this, if you please. I am doing this for my own sake," she said ironically, giving him to understand that she was doing everything for his sake, and in this way did not give him the right to refuse her. He was silent, and frowned. He felt that this lie which surrounded him was becoming so entangled that it was getting hard to make out anything.

She was doing everything about him for her own sake,