"And you—you've known her a long time?"
"More than a year."
"You were intimate with her before her acquaintance with Poluektov?"
"You're a cunning fox," thought Ilya, and said quietly:
"How can I say, when I didn't know that she lived with the man that's dead."
The magistrate drew his lips together and whistled, and began to finger the pile of documents. Ilya looked again at the picture; he felt that his interest in it helped him to keep calm. From somewhere, the clear, gay laugh of a child came to his ear. Then a happy, gentle, woman's voice sang tenderly: "My Annie, my little one, my darling, my dear."
"That picture appears to interest you greatly."
"Where is Christ supposed to be going?" asked Ilya.
The magistrate looked in his face with a weary, disillusioned expression, and said after a pause:
"You can see. He's come down to earth to see how men fulfil His commands. He's going over a battle-field—round about are dead men, houses destroyed, fire plundering."