"What?"
"Your picture."
"Martyr."
"Ah! martyr--martyr--and--do you not believe that she killed herself? It is wrong to kill one's self."
Nita says nothing.
"And--do you not think--that she killed herself--because"--Mascha murmurs this softly to the folds of Nita's dress--"because she had done something wrong?"
"But, Maschenka, how do you come by such thoughts?" Nita says it quite reproachfully.
Maschenka is silent, and Nita continues to stroke her hair gently, like a tender mother who lulls her sick child to sleep. After a while Maschenka begins anew. "Nita," whispers she, and her voice sounds so weary and choked that Nita only with difficulty understands her, "could you ever love any one if you knew that he had done something wrong?"
"What do you mean?" asks Nita, and feels that the young being leaning against her trembles as with a violent chill.
"Can you understand that one can do something really wrong, something wholly wrong, without being bad himself?"