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 look. Except Gerasim, it seemed to Ivan Il'ich as if Voloda alone understood and pitied him.

They all sat down, again they asked him about his health. Silence ensued. Liza asked her mother about the opera glass. There was a slight dispute between mother and daughter as to what had become of it. The dispute ended unpleasantly.

Theodor Dmitrievich asked Ivan Il'ich whether he had seen Sarah Bernhardt Ivan Il'ich did not at first understand the question, and presently answered no.

"You have seen her already, I suppose?"

"Yes, in ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur.’"

Praskov'ya Thedorovna said that she was particularly good in that part. The daughter contradicted. An argument began about the elegance and realism of her acting, that sort of conversation which is always one and the same thing.

In the middle of the conversation Theodor Dmitrievich looked at Ivan Il'ich and was silent. The others looked at him and were silent Ivan Il'ich was gazing in front of him with sparkling eyes, evidently he was angry with them. Evidently this ought to be put right, but there was no means whatever of putting it right. This silence ought to be broken somehow. But nobody could make up his mind to do so, and it was frightfully awkward to all of them that no convenient lie was ready to hand, and it was plain to all of them what was wanted. Liza was the first to make up her mind. She broke the silence. She wanted to conceal what all of them were experiencing, but she spoke out.