That very day he was to come. Yet three o’clock arrived--four o’clock--and no Oblomov. By half-past five the beauty and the freshness of her features had begun to fade. Insensibly her form assumed a drooping posture, and as she sat at the table her face was pale. Yet no one noticed this. The rest of the guests consumed the dishes which she had prepared for him alone, and carried on a desultory, indifferent chatter of conversation. Until ten o’clock she vacillated between hope and despair. Then, on the arrival of that hour, she withdrew to her room. At first she showered upon his head all the resentment that was seething within her. Not a word of mordant sarcasm in her vocabulary would she not have devoted to his punishing, had he been present. But after a while her mind passed from fierceness to a thought which chilled it like ice. “He is sick,” was that thought. “He is lonely and ill, and unable even to write.” So much did the idea gain upon her that she passed a sleepless night, and rose pale, quiet, and determined. The same morning--it was Monday--the landlady informed Oblomov that a visitor desired to see him. “To see _me?_ Surely not?” he exclaimed. “Where is _she?_” “Outside. Shall I send her away?” Oblomov was about to assent when Olga’s maid, Katia, entered the room. Oblomov changed countenance. “How come you to be here?” he asked. “My mistress is outside,” she replied, “and has sent me in to bid you go to her.” There was no help for it, so he went out, and found Olga alone. “Are you quite well?” she exclaimed. “What has been the matter with you?” With that they entered his study. “I am better now--the sore throat is almost gone,” he replied; and as he spoke he touched the part mentioned, and coughed slightly. “Then why did you not come last night?” She raked him with a glance so keen that for the moment he found himself tongue-tied. “And why have _you_ taken such a step as this?” he countered. “Surely you know what you are doing?” “Never mind,” she retorted impatiently. “I do not believe you have been ill at all.” “No--I have not,” he confessed. “You have been deceiving me? Why so?” “I will explain later. Important reasons have kept me away from you for a fortnight.” “What are they?” “I--I am afraid of scandal, of people’s tongues.” “And not of the fact that possibly I might pass sleepless nights--that possibly I might be so anxious as to be unable to rest?” “You cannot think what is passing within me,” he said, pointing to his head, and then to his heart. “I am all on edge, all on fire.” With that he told her what Zakhar had said to him, and ended with a statement that, like herself, he could not sleep, and that in every glance he saw a question, or a sneer, or a veiled hint at the relations which might be existing between her and himself.