"He has begun picking at himself," said Marya Nikolaevna.

"How do you mean?" "Like this," she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt.

Levin noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it were, trying to snatch something away.

Marya Nikolaevna's prediction came true.

Towards night the sick man was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes.