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 a little late for dinner. He had a little dinner, talked gaily, but for a long time could not settle down to any occupation. At last he went to his cabinet and immediately set to work. He read cases and worked away, but the consciousness that there was gnawing away at him a postponed, serious, suppressed something with which he would finally have to do, never once left him. When he had finished his work he recollected that this suppressed thing was the thought of the lower gut But he did not give way to it, he went to the drawing-room for some tea. Guests were there, and there was conversation, and music, and singing, and the judge whom they wished to be his daughter's fiancé was present. Ivan Il'ich spent the evening, Praskov'ya Thedorovna observed, more gaily than the others, but not for a moment did he forget the weighty, postponed thought of the lower gut. At eleven o'clock he took leave of his guests, and went to his own room. Ever since the beginning of his illness he had slept alone in a little apartment off his cabinet. There he went, undressed, and took up a romance of Zola's, but instead of reading it fell a-thinking. And in his imagination the much-desired improvement of the small gut was accomplished. There was re-absorption, suppuration, and the proper functional activity was restored "That's the whole thing," he said to himself; "all you've got to do is to assist nature." He remembered that he had to take his medicine, got up, took it, lay down on his back, waiting for the beneficial action of the medicine to destroy the pain. "All