“Marie!”
Her lips were quivering, she was struggling with herself, but suddenly she raised herself and said with flashing eyes:
“Nikolay Stavrogin is a scoundrel!” And she fell back helplessly with her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically, and tightly squeezing Shatov’s hand in hers.
From that moment she would not let him leave her; she insisted on his sitting by her pillow. She could not talk much but she kept gazing at him and smiling blissfully. She seemed suddenly to have become a silly girl. Everything seemed transformed. Shatov cried like a boy, then talked of God knows what, wildly, crazily, with inspiration, kissed her hands; she listened entranced, perhaps not understanding him, but caressingly ruffling his hair with her weak hand, smoothing it and admiring it. He talked about Kirillov, of how they would now begin “a new life” for good, of the existence of God, of the goodness of all men.… She took out the child again to gaze at it rapturously.
“Marie,” he cried, as he held the child in his arms, “all the old madness, shame, and deadness is over, isn’t it? Let us work hard and begin a new life, the three of us, yes, yes!… Oh, by the way, what shall we call him, Marie?”
“What shall we call him?” she repeated with surprise, and there was a sudden look of terrible grief in her face.
She clasped her hands, looked reproachfully at Shatov and hid her face in the pillow.
“Marie, what is it?” he cried with painful alarm.
“How could you, how could you … Oh, you ungrateful man!”
“Marie, forgive me, Marie … I only asked you what his name should be. I don’t know.…”