“Well, that’s a good thing, that’s capital!” he muttered in his bed. “I’ve been afraid all the time that we should go. Here it’s so nice, better than anywhere.⁠ ⁠… You won’t leave me? Oh, you have not left me!”

It was by no means so nice “here,” however. He did not care to hear of her difficulties; his head was full of fancies and nothing else. He looked upon his illness as something transitory, a trifling ailment, and did not think about it at all; he thought of nothing but how they would go and sell “these books.” He asked her to read him the gospel.

“I haven’t read it for a long time⁠ ⁠… in the original. Someone may ask me about it and I shall make a mistake; I ought to prepare myself after all.”

She sat down beside him and opened the book.

“You read beautifully,” he interrupted her after the first line. “I see, I see I was not mistaken,” he added obscurely but ecstatically. He was, in fact, in a continual state of enthusiasm. She read the Sermon on the Mount.