"Who should there be but me? She took me into her service, poor wretch that I am. 'You'll not find a place anywhere else, granny,' she said, 'but there isn't much to do for me, only just a bit here and there.' And now here we are; I'd promised myself that she would bury me.... God be merciful to us sinners!..." She began unexpectedly to whisper a prayer, detaching one word from the other, and moving her lips from side to side like a camel. Her head shook and the tears flowed down the wrinkles into her toothless mouth. "She was good----" Granny began snivelling, and gesticulated wildly, as if she meant to drive the doctor away from her. He returned to the sick-room and began to walk up and down on tiptoe. Round after round he walked after his usual habit. Now and then he stopped beside the bed and muttered between his teeth with a rage that made his lips pale: "What a fool you have been! It is not only impossible to live like that, but it is not even worth while. You can't make the whole of your life one single performance of duty. Those idiots will take it all without understanding; they will drag you to it by the rope round your neck, and if you let your foolish illusions run away with you, death will make you its victim; for you are too beautiful, too much beloved----" As fire licks up dry wood, so a past and long-forgotten feeling took possession of him. It revived in him with the strength and the treacherous sweetness of former years. He persuaded himself that he had never forgotten her, that he had worshipped and remembered her up to that very moment. He gazed into the well-known face with an insatiable curiosity, and a dumb, piercing pain began to devour his heart as he thought that for three years she had been living here, near him, and he only heard of it when death was on the point of taking her away from him. All that was befalling him this day seemed to be the consequence of his animal existence, which had led him nowhere except to burrow in the ground. Yet he felt as if suddenly a mysterious horizon opened out before him, an ocean spreading far away into the mist. With all the effort of impatient despair he grasped at memories, seeking refuge in them from an intolerable reality; he plunged into them as into the rosy halo of a summer dawn. He felt he must be alone, if only for a moment, to think and think. He slipped into a third room which was filled with forms and tables. Here he sat down in the dark to collect his thoughts and contrive some way of saving his patient. But he began to recall memories: