The repulsive terror of which we think when we speak of death was absent from the bed-room. In the pervading dumbness, in the mother’s pose, in the indifference of the doctor’s face was something attractive that touched the heart, the subtle and elusive beauty of human grief, which it will take men long to understand and describe, and only music, it seems, is able to express. Beauty too was felt in the stern stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and did not weep, as though they confessed all the poetry of their condition. As once the season of their youth passed away, so now in this boy their right to bear children had passed away, alas! for ever to eternity. The doctor is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his faded sick wife is thirty-five. Audrey was not merely the only son but the last. In contrast to his wife the doctor’s nature belonged to those which feel the necessity of movement when their soul is in pain. After standing by his wife for about five minutes, he passed from the bed-room, lifting his right foot too high, into a little room half filled with a big broad divan. From there he went to the kitchen. After wandering about the fireplace and the cook’s bed, he stooped through a little door and came into the hall. Here he saw the white scarf and the pale face again. “At last,” sighed Aboguin, seizing the doorhandle. “Let us go, please.” The doctor shuddered, glanced at him and remembered. “Listen. I’ve told you already that I can’t go,” he said, livening. “What a strange idea!” “Doctor, I’m made of flesh and blood, too. I fully understand your condition. I sympathise with you,” Aboguin said in an imploring voice, putting his hand to his scarf. “But I am not asking for myself. My wife is dying. If you had heard her cry, if you’d seen her face, you would understand my insistence! My God--and I thought that you’d gone to dress yourself. The time is precious, Doctor! Let us go, I beg of you.” “I can’t come,” Kirilov said after a pause, and stepped into his drawing-room. Aboguin followed him and seized him by the sleeve. “You’re in sorrow. I understand. But I’m not asking you to cure a toothache, or to give expert evidence,--but to save a human life.” He went on imploring like a beggar. “This life is more than any personal grief. I ask you for courage, for a brave deed--in the name of humanity.” “Humanity cuts both ways,” Kirilov said irritably. “In the name of the same humanity I ask you not to take me away. My God, what a strange idea! I can hardly stand on my feet and you frighten me with humanity. I’m not fit for anything now. I won’t go for anything. With whom shall I leave my wife? No, no....” Kirilov flung out his open hands and drew back. “And ... and don’t ask me,” he continued, disturbed. “I’m sorry.... Under the Laws, Volume XIII., I’m obliged to go and you have the right to drag me by the neck.... Well, drag me, but ... I’m not fit.... I’m not even able to speak. Excuse me.”