The patient's bed stood near the inner wall far from the window.
He lay on his back, covered with a white blanket, smoking a cigarette, though almost half unconscious.
Notwithstanding the smoke, the flies pestered him with peculiar persistence, so that he had continually to pass his hand over his face.
His arms were so weak, so bare of muscle, that they showed the bones, of almost equal thickness from wrist to shoulder, in clear outline.
His head nestled despondently in the pillow. His whole body and face burned in a dry fever.
His large round eyes were sunken and gazed aimlessly about, as if looking for something. The lines of his nose had grown longer and sharper. His mouth was half open.
He had stopped coughing, but he breathed with such difficulty that it seemed as if all his vital energy were concentrated in his chest.
"Well, how do you feel to-day?" asked Arina Petrovna, sinking into the armchair at his feet.
"So—so—to-morrow—that is, to-day—when was the doctor here?"
"He was here to-day."
"Well, then, to-morrow——"
The patient fumbled as if struggling to recall a word.
"You'll be able to get up?" prompted Arina Petrovna. "God grant it, my friend, God grant it."
They both remained silent for a moment.
Arina Petrovna found it very difficult to open a conversation when she was face to face with Pavel Vladimirych.
"Yudushka—is he alive?" finally asked the sick man himself.
"Nothing is the matter with him. He lives and prospers."
"I bet he is thinking, 'Now brother Pavel is going to die—and with God's help the estate will come to me.'"
"We'll all die, some day—and after every one of us, the estates will go to the lawful heirs."
"Only not to the Bloodsucker!
I'll throw it to the dogs, but he shan't have it."
The situation was turning out excellently. Pavel Vladimirych himself was leading the conversation.
Arina Petrovna did not fail to take advantage of the opportunity.
"You ought to consider that, my friend," she said, as if by the way, not looking at her son and examining the color of her hands as if they were the main object of her interest.
"What do you mean by 'that'?"
"Well, I mean, if you don't wish that the estate should go to your brother."
The patient was silent.
Only his eyes widened unnaturally and his face flushed more and more.
"And also, my friend, you ought to take into consideration the fact that you have orphaned nieces—and what sort of capital have they?
Then there is your mother," continued Arina Petrovna.
"You've managed to give everything away to Yudushka!"
"Whatever may have happened, I know that I myself am to blame. But it wasn't such a crime after all. I thought 'he is my son.' At any rate, it isn't kind of you to remember that against your mother."
Silence followed.
"Well, why don't you say something?"
"And how soon do you expect to bury me?"
"Oh, don't talk like that. All Christians——Everybody doesn't die right away, still in general——"
"There you go—'in general!'
Always your 'in general!'
You think I don't see."
"See what, my boy?"
"I see you take me for a fool.
Well, if I am a fool, let me remain a fool. Why do you come to a fool? Don't come, don't worry about me."
"I'm not worrying. But in general there is a term set to everybody's life."
"Then wait for my term."
Arina Petrovna lowered her head and meditated.
She saw clearly that her case was almost a failure, but she was so tortured that nothing could convince her of the fruitlessness of further attempts to influence her son.
"I don't know why you hate me," she declared finally.
"Not at all—on the contrary I—not at all.
In fact I—why, the idea—you brought us all up—so impartially."
He spoke in jerks and gasps. A broken yet triumphant laugh made its way into his voice. His eyes sparkled. His shoulders and legs quivered.