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 diately began to prove that she had been up long ago, and that it was only owing to a misunderstanding that she had not been there when the doctor arrived

Ivan Il'ich looked at her, and took her all in, and her whiteness and her puffiness, and the cleanness of her hands and neck, and the glitter of her hair, and the brightness of her eyes full of life, were all so many causes of reproach against her. He hated her with all the force of his soul, and her mere contact made him suffer from an access of hatred against her.

Her attitude towards him and his illness was precisely the same. Just as the doctor had taken up an attitude towards the sick man which he could not now drop, so, too, she had taken up an attitude towards him, founded on the assumption that he would not do anything he ought to do, and it was all his own fault, and she loved to blame him for it, and this attitude once taken up she could not drop it.

"He wouldn't listen, you know; he wouldn't take things in time, and, above all, he lies in a position which is very bad for him, with his legs up."

And she told the doctor how he had made Gerasim hold his feet up.

The doctor smiled with bland contemptuousness.

"What are we to do?" said he; "these invalids, you know, sometimes do have such odd ideas, but we may forgive him, I suppose."

When the examination was completed, the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskov'ya Thedorovna told Ivan Il'ich that she had done what he wanted, and invited the famous doctor to come and see him,