Nekhludoff translated the Englishman’s questions.  While they were conversing they heard approaching footsteps, the door opened and the jailer entered, followed by Katiousha in her prison garb, with a scarf tied around her head.

Nekhludoff rose and made a few steps toward her.  She said nothing, but her excited expression surprised him.  Her face was lit up with a wonderful decision.  He had never seen her look like that.  Now the blood rushed to her face, and now she turned pale; now her fingers twisted convulsively the edges of her jacket, now she looked at him, and now she dropped her eyes.

“You know what I called you for?” asked Nekhludoff.

“Yes, he told me.  But now I am decided.  I will ask permission to go with Vladimir Ivanovitch.”  She said this quickly, as if she had made up her mind before what to say.

“How with Vladimir Ivanovitch?” asked Nekhludoff.  But she interrupted him.

“But if he wants me to live with him?” Here she stopped in fear, and added, “I mean to stay with him.  I could expect nothing better, and perhaps I may be useful to him and others.  What difference does it make to me?”

One of the two things had happened—­either she had fallen in love with Simonson and did not wish his sacrifice, which weighed so heavily on him, or she was still in love with Nekhludoff and renounced him for his own good, burning all bridges behind her, and throwing her fortunes in the same scale with those of Simonson.  Nekhludoff understood it, and felt ashamed.

“If you are in love with him,” he said.

“I never knew such people, you know.  It is impossible not to love them.  And Vladimir is entirely unlike any person I have ever known.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Nekhludoff.  “He is an excellent man, and I think——­”

Here she interrupted him, as if she were afraid that he would speak too much, or she would not say everything.

“You will forgive me for doing that which you did not wish.  You, too, must love.”

She said the very thing that he had just said to himself.

But now he was no longer thinking so, but felt altogether different.  He felt not only shame, but pity.

“Is it possible that all is at an end between us?” he said.

“Yes, it looks like it,” she answered, with a strange smile.

“But nevertheless I would like to be useful to you.”

“To us,” she said, glancing at Nekhludoff.  “We don’t need anything.  I am very much obliged to you.  If it were not for you”—­she wished to say something, but her voice began to tremble.

“I don’t know which of us is under greater obligation to the other.  God will settle our accounts,” said Nekhludoff.

“Yes, God will settle them,” she whispered.

“Are you ready?” asked the Englishman.

“Directly,” answered Nekhludoff, and then he inquired of her what she knew of Kryltzoff.