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RUDIN of the same. Catching sight of Alexandra Pavlovna he at once stopped his horse and turned round towards her. His broad and colourless face with its small light grey eyes and almost white moustache seemed all in the same tone of colour as his clothes.

‘Good-morning!’ he began, with a lazy smile; ‘what are you doing here, if I may ask?’

‘I have been visiting a sick woman And where have you come from, Mihailo Mihailitch?’

The man addressed as Mihailo Mihailitch looked into her eyes and smiled again.

‘You do well,’ he said, ‘to visit the sick, but wouldn’t it be better for you to take her into the hospital?’

‘She is too weak; impossible to move her.’

‘But don’t you intend to give up your hospital?’

‘Give it up? Why?’

‘Oh, I thought so.’

‘What a strange notion! What put such an idea into your head?’

‘Oh, you are always with Madame Lasunsky now, you know, and seem to be under her 6