“Well, lass, you’ll have rare times now,” Korableva said, when Maslova returned to the cell. “Seems he’s mighty sweet on you; make the most of it while he’s after you. He’ll help you out. Rich people can do anything.”
“Yes, that’s so,” remarked the watchman’s wife, with her musical voice. “When a poor man thinks of getting married, there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip; but a rich man need only make up his mind and it’s done. We knew a toff like that duckie. What d’you think he did?”
“Well, have you spoken about my affairs?” the old woman asked.
But Maslova gave her fellow-prisoners no answer; she lay down on the shelf bedstead, her squinting eyes fixed on a corner of the room, and lay there until the evening.
A painful struggle went on in her soul. What Nekhludoff had told her called up the memory of that world in which she had suffered and which she had left without having understood, hating it. She now feared to wake from the trance in which she was living. Not having arrived at any conclusion when evening came, she again bought some vodka and drank with her companions.
CHAPTER XLIX. VERA DOUKHOVA.
“So this is what it means, this,” thought Nekhludoff as he left the prison, only now fully understanding his crime. If he had not tried to expiate his guilt he would never have found out how great his crime was. Nor was this all; she, too, would never have felt the whole horror of what had been done to her. He only now saw what he had done to the soul of this woman; only now she saw and understood what had been done to her.
Up to this time Nekhludoff had played with a sensation of self-admiration, had admired his own remorse; now he was simply filled with horror. He knew he could not throw her up now, and yet he could not imagine what would come of their relations to one another.
Just as he was going out, a jailer, with a disagreeable, insinuating countenance, and a cross and medals on his breast, came up and handed him a note with an air of mystery.