United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


And it seemed as though they were talking of medicine to give Olga Ivanovna a chance of being silent that is, of not lying. After dinner Korostelev sat down to the piano, while Dymov sighed and said to him: "Ech, brother well, well! Play something melancholy."

"Let us sit down," he said, raising her and seating her at the table. "That's right, eat the grouse. You are starving, poor darling." She eagerly breathed in the atmosphere of home and ate the grouse, while he watched her with tenderness and laughed with delight. Apparently, by the middle of the winter Dymov began to suspect that he was being deceived.

Dymov was lying on his stomach, with his head propped on his fists, looking into the fire. . . . Styopka's shadow was dancing over him, so that his handsome face was at one minute covered with darkness, at the next lighted up. . . . Kiruha and Vassya were wandering about at a little distance gathering dry grass and bark for the fire.

He sat there another two minutes, and with a guilty smile went away. It had been a very troubled day. Dymov had a very bad headache; he had no breakfast, and did not go to the hospital, but spent the whole time lying on his sofa in the study. Olga Ivanovna went as usual at midday to see Ryabovsky, to show him her still-life sketch, and to ask him why he had not been to see her the evening before.

"Next day, as soon as it was light," Dymov went on, "the merchants were preparing to set off and the mowers tried to join them. 'Let us go together, your worships. It will be more cheerful and there will be less danger, for this is an out-of-the-way place. . . . The merchants had to travel at a walking pace to avoid breaking the images, and that just suited the mowers. . . ."

At first she thought it would be a good thing to poison herself, so that when Ryabovsky came back he would find her dead; then her imagination carried her to her drawing-room, to her husband's study, and she imagined herself sitting motionless beside Dymov and enjoying the physical peace and cleanliness, and in the evening sitting in the theatre, listening to Mazini.

This slow travelling exhausted him, and the sultriness of the day had given him a headache. While they were cooking the porridge, Dymov, to relieve his boredom, began quarrelling with his companions. "Here he lolls, the lumpy face, and is the first to put his spoon in," he said, looking spitefully at Emelyan. "Greedy! always contrives to sit next the cauldron.

Now his face is turned three-quarters towards us in a bad light, but when he turns round look at his forehead. Ryabovsky, what do you say to that forehead? Dymov, we are talking about you!" she called to her husband. "Come here; hold out your honest hand to Ryabovsky.... That's right, be friends."

Such self-sacrifice, such genuine sympathy! I sat up with my father, and did not sleep for nights, either. And all at once the princess had won the hero's heart my Dymov fell head over ears in love. Really, fate is so strange at times!

Her husband, Osip Stepanitch Dymov, was a doctor, and only of the rank of a titular councillor. He was on the staff of two hospitals: in one a ward-surgeon and in the other a dissecting demonstrator. Every day from nine to twelve he saw patients and was busy in his ward, and after twelve o'clock he went by tram to the other hospital, where he dissected.