the consultation was held. Pólozof came in. The most important of the sages, in appropriately gloomily solemn language and in a majestically funereal voice, announced the decision of the consulting physicians.
Pólozof started back as though struck on the forehead by a hammer. To be waiting for death, when death is at hand, but uncertain how soon it may come, or whether it may come at all, and to hear that in half an hour she will not be among the living, are two absolutely different things. Kirsánof looked at Pólozof with an intense gaze; he was absolutely sure of the effect, but still the thing was a strain on his nerves. Two minutes the old man stood silent, horror-stricken.
"No; it must not be! She is dying from my stubbornness. I am ready for anything. Can she get well?"
"Of course," said Kirsánof.
The famous practitioners would have been greatly stirred to wrath, if they had had time for it; that is, to exchange glances, and to see that "my colleagues also like me understand that I have been a doll in the hands of this young boy." But Kirsánof allowed them no time to turn their attention to the thought, "how others looked on me." Kirsánof told the servant to conduct the frightened Pólozof from the room; thanked them for their shrewdness, which they had displayed in fathoming his intentions, for their understanding that the cause of the illness was mental suffering; that it was necessary to frighten the stubborn old man, who would otherwise have lost his daughter. The famous practitioners went each his way, satisfied that his scientific knowledge and shrewdness was recognized by all the others.
But having given them this brief testimony of their skill, Kirsánof went to tell the sick girl that the plan had succeeded. At the first words she seized his hand, and he had hardly time to take it away from her before she would have kissed it. "But I shall not let your father come quite yet, to tell you the same thing," he said. "I shall first give him a lecture as to the way that he should behave himself towards you." He told her that he was going to give her father some good advice, and that he should not leave him until he had firmly implanted it.
Shocked by the result of the consultation, the old man became very pliable; and he regarded Kirsánof, not with the same eyes as the day before, but with such as Marya Alek-
