If Varvara Petrovna had remained another three minutes she could not have endured the stifling sensation that this motionless lethargy roused in her, and would have waked him.

But he suddenly opened his eyes, and sat for ten minutes as immovable as before, staring persistently and curiously, as though at some object in the corner which had struck him, although there was nothing new or striking in the room.
Suddenly there rang out the low deep note of the clock on the wall.
With some uneasiness he turned to look at it, but almost at the same moment the other door opened, and the butler, Alexey Yegorytch came in.
He had in one hand a greatcoat, a scarf, and a hat, and in the other a silver tray with a note on it.
"Half-past nine," he announced softly, and laying the other things on a chair, he held out the tray with the note--a scrap of paper unsealed and scribbled in pencil.

Glancing through it, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch took a pencil from the table, added a few words, and put the note back on the tray.
"Take it back as soon as I have gone out, and now dress me," he said, getting up from the sofa.
Noticing that he had on a light velvet jacket, he thought a minute, and told the man to bring him a cloth coat, which he wore on more ceremonious occasions.

At last, when he was dressed and had put on his hat, he locked the door by which his mother had come into the room, took the letter from under the paperweight, and without saying a word went out into the corridor, followed by Alexey Yegorytch.

From the corridor they went down the narrow stone steps of the back stairs to a passage which opened straight into the garden.