Matiza's head swayed, and she said briefly:
"She hasn't hanged herself yet."
"Oh, speak out!" cried Ilya roughly. "What do you begin at me for? You sold her yourself for three roubles."
"I don't reproach you, only myself," she answered quietly and emphatically, then began to tell of Masha, choking with the exertion.
"Her old husband is jealous and torments her, he lets her go nowhere, not even into the shop. She sits in one room, and mayn't go into the courtyard without leave. He's got rid of his children somehow, and lives alone with Masha. He pinches her and ties her hands, he treats her so badly because his first wife was untrue, and the two children are not his. Masha has run away twice, but both times the police have brought her back, and the old man pinches her and starves her for it. See, what a life!"
"Yes, you and Perfishka did a good deed," said Ilya gloomily.
"I thought it was better," said the woman, in her toneless voice. Her face motionless as though carved in stone, and her dead voice, weighed on Ilya.
"I thought—it was cleaner so. But the worse would have been better. She might have been sold to a rich man, he would have given her a home and clothes, and everything, and afterwards she would have sent him off and lived like all the others. Ever so many live like that."
"Well, why have you come to me?" asked Ilya.
"You live here, in a policeman's house. You see, they always catch her. Tell him to let her go, let her run away. She'll manage somehow. Is one not allowed to run away?"