On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev — Read

The day of departure drew near. November was already over; the latest date for starting had come. Insarov had long ago made his preparations, and was burning with anxiety to get out of Moscow as soon as possible. And the doctor was urging him on. "You need a warm climate," he told him; "you will not get well here. " Elena, too, was fretting with impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and his emaciation. She often looked with involuntary terror at his changed face. Her position in her parents' house had become insupportable. Her mother mourned over her, as over the dead, while her father treated her with contemptuous coldness; the approaching separation secretly pained him too, but he regarded it as his duty -- the duty of an offended father -- to disguise his feelings, his weakness. Anna Vassilyevna at last expressed a wish to see Insarov. He was taken up to her secretly by the back stairs. After he had entered her room, for a long time she could not speak to him, she could not even bring herself to look at him; he sat down near her chair, and waited, with quiet respectfulness, for her first word. Elena sat down close, and held her mother's hand in hers. At last Anna Vassilyevna raised her eyes, saying: "God is your judge, Dmitri Nikanorovitch" -- she stopped short: the reproaches died away on her lips. "Why, you are ill," she cried: "Elena, your husband's ill!"

"I have been unwell, Anna Vassilyevna," answered Insarov; "and even now I am not quite strong yet: but I hope my native air will make me perfectly well again."