“It is an old picture which I came across in Panov.  It may please you to have it.  Take it.”

Raising her black eyebrows she looked at him with her squinting eyes, as though asking, “What is that for?” Then she silently took the envelope and tucked it under her apron.

“I saw your aunt there,” said Nekhludoff.

“Did you?” she said, with indifference.

“How do you fare here?” asked Nekhludoff.

“Fairly well,” she said.

“It is not very hard?”

“Not very.  I am not used to it yet.”

“I am very glad.  At any rate, it is better than there.”

“Than where?” she said, and her face became purple.

“There, in the prison,” Nekhludoff hastened to say.

“Why better?” she asked.

“I think the people here are better.  There are no such people here as there.”

“There are many good people there.”

“I did what I could for the Menshovs and hope they will be freed,” said Nekhludoff.

“May God grant it.  Such a wonderful little woman,” she said, repeating her description of the old woman, and slightly smiled.

“I am going to-day to St. Petersburg.  Your case will be heard soon, and, I hope, will be reversed.”

“It is all the same now, whether they reverse it or not,” she said.

“Why now?”

“So,” she answered, and stealthily glanced at him inquiringly.

Nekhludoff understood this answer and this glance as a desire on her part to know if he were still holding to his decision, or had changed it since her refusal.

“I don’t know why it is all the same to you,” he said, “but to me it really is all the same whether you are acquitted or not.  In either case, I am ready to do what I said,” he said, with determination.

She raised her head, and her black, squinting eyes fixed themselves on his face and past it, and her whole face became radiant with joy.  But her words were in an entirely different strain.

“Oh, you needn’t talk that way,” she said.

“I say it that you may know.”

“Everything has been already said, and there is no use talking any more,” she said, with difficulty repressing a smile.

There was some noise in the ward.  A child was heard crying.

“I think I am called,” she said, looking around with anxiety.

“Well, then, good-by,” he said.

She pretended not to see his extended hand, turned round, and endeavoring to hide her elation, she walked away with quick step.

“What is taking place in her?  What is she thinking?  What are her feelings?  Is she putting me to a test, or is she really unable to forgive me?  Can she not say what she thinks and feels, or simply will not?  Is she pacified or angered?” Nekhludoff asked himself, but could give no answer.  One thing he knew, however, and that was that she had changed; that a spiritual transformation was taking place in her, and this transformation united him not only to her, but to Him in whose name it was taking place.  And this union caused him joyful agitation.