“I do not know why it does not matter to you,” he said. “It certainly does not matter as far as I am concerned whether you are acquitted or not. I am ready to do what I told you in any case,” he said decidedly.
She lifted her head and her black squinting eyes remained fixed on him and beyond him, and her face beamed with joy. But the words she spoke were very different from what her eyes said.
“You should not speak like that,” she said.
“I am saying it so that you should know.”
“Everything has been said about that, and there is no use speaking,” she said, with difficulty repressing a smile.
A sudden noise came from the hospital ward, and the sound of a child crying.
“I think they are calling me,” she said, and looked round uneasily.
“Well, good-bye, then,” he said. She pretended not to see his extended hand, and, without taking it, turned away and hastily walked along the strip of carpet, trying to hide the triumph she felt.
“What is going on in her? What is she thinking? What does she feel? Does she mean to prove me, or can she really not forgive me? Is it that she cannot or that she will not express what she feels and thinks? Has she softened or hardened?” he asked himself, and could find no answer. He only knew that she had altered and that an important change was going on in her soul, and this change united him not only to her but also to Him for whose sake that change was being wrought. And this union brought on a state of joyful animation and tenderness.
When she returned to the ward, in which there stood eight small beds, Maslova began, in obedience to the nurse’s order, to arrange one of the beds; and, bending over too far with the sheet, she slipped and nearly fell down.