"I didn't. I am alive, as you see."
He rose and paced up and down the room several times, visibly affected. At last he went over to Anninka and stroked her head.
"My poor, poor Anninka!" he said softly.
At the touch of his hands a startling change took place in her. At first she was amazed, then her face began to work, and suddenly a violent torrent of hysterical, inhuman sobs burst from her chest.
"Uncle, are you good? Tell me, are you good?" she fairly shrieked.
In a broken voice, through tears and sobs, she kept on reiterating her query, the same she had asked him the day of her return to Golovliovo, to which he had given such an absurd reply.
"You are good? Tell me, answer me, are you good?"
"Did you hear what the priest read at the evening service?" he said, when she finally grew calm. "Oh, what sufferings He underwent! Only such sufferings can——And yet He forgave, forgave forever!"
He resumed his pacing, his very soul rent with suffering and his face covered with beads of perspiration.
"He pardoned every one," he reflected aloud. "Not only those who at that time gave Him vinegar mingled with gall to drink, but also those who are doing the same thing now and will do it again in future ages. What a horror!"