“He would not let me go.  He exhausted me.  I went into the corridor and said to Simon Michaelovich:  ’If he would only let me go; I am so tired.’  And Simon Michaelovich said:  ’We are also tired of him.  We intend to give him sleeping powders.  When he is asleep you can go.’  ‘All right,’ I said.  I thought that it was a harmless powder.  He gave me a package.  I entered.  He lay behind the partition, and ordered me to bring him some brandy.  I took from the table a bottle of feen-champagne, poured into two glasses—­for myself and him—­threw the powder into his glass and handed it to him.  I would not have given it to him if I had known it.”

“And how did you come by the ring?” asked the justiciary.

“He presented it to me.”

“When did he present it to you?”

“When we reached his room.  I wished to depart.  Then he struck me on the head and broke my comb.  I was angered, and wished to go.  Then he took the ring from his finger and gave it to me, asking me to stay,” she said.

Here the assistant prosecutor again rose, and with a dissimulating naiveness asked permission to ask a few more questions, which was granted, and leaning his head on his gold-embroidered collar, he asked: 

“I would like to know how long was the prisoner in the room with Smelkoff?”

Maslova was again terror-stricken, and with her frightened eyes wandering from the prosecutor to the justiciary, she answered, hurriedly: 

“I do not remember how long.”

“And does the prisoner remember entering another part of the hotel after she had left Smelkoff?”

Maslova was thinking.

“Into the next room—­an empty one,” she said.

“Why did you enter that room?” said the assistant prosecutor, impulsively.

“To wait for a cabriolet.”

“Was not Kartinkin in the room with the prisoner?”

“He also came in.”

“Why did he come in?”

“There was the merchant’s feen-champagne left, and we drank it together.”

“Oh, drank together.  Very well.”

“And did the prisoner have any conversation with Simon, and what was the subject of the conversation?”

Maslova suddenly frowned, her face turned red, and she quickly answered: 

“What I said?  I know nothing more.  Do what you please with me.  I am innocent, and that is all.  I did not say anything.  I told everything that happened.”

“I have no more questions to ask,” said the prosecutor to the court, and uplifting his shoulders he began to add to the memorandums of his speech that the prisoner herself confessed to entering an empty room with Simon.

There was a short silence.

“Have you anything else to say?”

“I have told everything,” she said, sighing, and took her seat.

The justiciary then made some notes, and after he had listened to a suggestion whispered by the associate on the left, declared a recess of ten minutes, and, hastily rising, walked out of the court-room.