“And if I do give it away, then all I have to tell you is that the remainder will be theirs, for I shall hardly marry.  And if I do, there will be no children—­so that——­”

“Dmitri, please stop it,” said Natalia Ivanovna; but Nekhludoff saw that she was glad to hear what he was saying.

The time for parting had come.  The conductors were closing the doors, inviting the passengers to take seats, others to leave the cars.

Nekhludoff entered the heated and ill-smelling car and immediately appeared on its platform.  Natalia Ivanovna was standing opposite, and evidently wished to say something, but could not find words.  She could not say “ecrivez,” because they had long been ridiculing the customary phrase of parting friends.  The conversation about financial affairs and the inheritance at once destroyed the tender relations they had resumed.  They now felt themselves estranged from each other.  So that Natalia Ivanovna was glad when the train began to move and she could say, with a smile:  “Well, Dmitri, good-by!” As soon as the train left she began to think how to tell her husband of her conversation with her brother, and her face became grave and worried.

And though Nekhludoff entertained the best sentiments toward his sister, and he concealed nothing from her, he now felt estranged from her, and was glad to be rid of her.  He felt that the Natasha of old was no more; that there was only a slave of an unpleasant, dark, hairy man with whom he had nothing in common.  He plainly saw this, because her face became illumined with peculiar animation only when he spoke of that which interested her husband—­of the distribution of the land among the peasants, and of the inheritance.  This made him sad.

CHAPTER XXV.

The heat in the large car of the third class, due to its exposure to the scorching sun rays and the large crowd within, was so suffocating that Nekhludoff remained on the platform.  But there was no relief even there, and he drew in long breaths when the train rolled out beyond the houses and the movement of the train created a draught.  “Yes, killed,” he repeated to himself.  And to his imagination appeared with unusual vividness the beautiful face of the second dead convict, with a smile on his lips, the forbidding expression of his forehead, and the small, strong ear under the shaved, bluish scalp.  “And the worst part of it is that he was killed, and no one knows who killed him.  Yet he was killed.  He was forwarded, like the others, at the order of Maslenikoff.  Maslenikoff probably signed the usual order with his foolish flourish, on a printed letter-head, and, of course, does not consider himself guilty.  The prison physician, who inspected the convicts, has still less reason for considering himself guilty.  He carefully fulfilled his duties, separated the weak ones, and could not possibly foresee either the terrible