"Yes, I'm very tired! After all, the prison makes one weak. The awful thing about it is the enforced inactivity. There is nothing more tormenting. We stay a week, five weeks. We know how much there is to be done. The people are waiting for knowledge. We're in a position to satisfy their wants, and there we are locked up in a cage like animals! That's what is so trying, that's what dries up the heart!"
"Who will reward you for all this?" asked the mother; and with a sigh she answered the question herself. "No one but God! Of course you don't believe in Him either?"
"No!" said the girl briefly, shaking her head.
"And I don't believe you!" the mother ejaculated in a sudden burst of excitement. Quickly wiping her charcoal-blackened hands on her apron she continued, with deep conviction in her voice:
"You don't understand your own faith! How could you live the kind of life you are living, without faith in God?"
A loud stamping of feet and a murmur of voices were heard on the porch. The mother started; the girl quickly rose to her feet, and whispered hurriedly:
"Don't open the door! If it's the gendarmes, you don't know me. I walked into the wrong house, came here by accident, fainted away, you undressed me, and found the books around me. You understand?"
"Why, my dear, what for?" asked the mother tenderly.
"Wait a while!" said Sashenka listening. "I think it's Yegor."
It was Yegor, wet and out of breath.