prevented from creeping through it by the consciousness that his life was good. This justification of his life held him as if with hooks, and would not let him get forward, and tormented him more than anything else.
Suddenly some sort of force smote him on the breast and in the side, his breathing became still more laboured, he struggled forward in the hole, and there at the end of the hole something or other was shining. He felt now as one feels in a railway carriage when one thinks that one is going forward when one is going backward, and one suddenly recognises the real direction.
"Yes, it was all what it should not have been," he said to himself, "but it doesn't matter. It is possible, quite possible, to do the right thing. But what is the right thing?" he asked himself, and was again silent.
This was at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. At this very time the gymnasiast had quietly crept into his father's room, and approached his bed. The dying man was still shrieking desperately and throwing his hands about. One of his hands fell on the head of the gymnasiast. The little gymnasiast seized it, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.
At that same moment Ivan Il'ich came to himself, saw the light, and it was revealed to him that his life had not been what it ought to have been, but that it was still possible to set it right. He asked himself: "What then is the right thing?" and was silent, listening intently. Then he felt that someone was
