A smile spread over her face. She slackened her pace and she talked, though not to me:
"Last spring my husband went down the Dneiper to float lumber, and he never came back. Perhaps he was drowned, or perhaps he found another wife—who knows? My father-in-law and mother-in-law are very poor and very bad. I have two children-a boy and a girl—and how was I to feed them? I was ready to work—to break myself in two working—? but there was no work. And what can a woman earn? My father-in-law scolded. 'You and your children are a millstone around our necks, with your eating and drinking.' My mother-in-law nagged, 'You are young yet; go to the monastery; the monks desire women, and you can earn much money.' I could not stand the hunger of the children, and so I went. Should I have drowned them? I went."
She talked as in her sleep, through her teeth and indistinctly, and her eyes cried out with the pain of motherhood.
"My son is already in his fourth year; his name is Ossip and my daughter's name is Ganka. I beat them when they asked for bread; I beat them. I have wandered a whole month and I have earned four rubles. The monks are miserly. I would have earned more at honest labor. Oh, those devils! What waters can wash me now?"
I felt I ought to say something to her, so I said: "On account of your children, God will forgive you."
Here she cried out at me. "What is that to me? I'm not guilty before God! If He doesn't forgive me, He doesn't have to, and if He forgives me, I myself cannot forget it. It cannot be worse in hell. There the children will not be with me."
I excited her in vain, I said to myself. But already she could not restrain herself.
"There is no God for the poor. When we were in Zeleniklin on the banks of the Amur, how we celebrated mass and prayed and wept for aid! But did He aid us? We suffered there for three years, and those who did not die from fever returned paupers. My father died there, my mother had her leg broken by a wheel and both my brothers were lost in Siberia."
Her face became like stone. Although her features were heavy, she had a serious beauty about her and her eyes were dark and her hair thick. All night up to early morning I spoke with her sitting on the edge of the wood behind the box of the railroad watchman. I saw that her heart was all burned out, that she was no longer capable of weeping, and only when she spoke of her childhood did she smile twice, involuntarily, and her eyes became softer.
I thought to myself as she spoke, "She's ready to kill. She will murder some one yet or she will become the loosest of the loose. There is no outlet for her."