Another fortnight had passed. Ivan Ilyitch could not now get up from the sofa. He did not like lying in bed, and lay on the sofa. And lying almost all the time facing the wall, in loneliness he suffered all the inexplicable agonies, and in loneliness pondered always that inexplicable question. What is it? Can it be true that it's death? And an inner voice answered, "Yes, it is true. " "Why these agonies? " and a voice answered, "For no reason. " Beyond and besides this there was nothing.
From the very beginning of his illness, ever since Ivan Ilyitch first went to the doctors, his life had been split up into two contradictory moods, which were continually alternating -- one was despair and the anticipation of an uncomprehended and awful death; the other was hope and an absorbed watching over the actual condition of his body. First there was nothing confronting him but a kidney or intestine which had temporarily declined to perform their duties, then there was nothing but unknown awful death, which there was no escaping.
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