He stopped.

“I will marry her, if necessary.”

He crossed his hands on his breast, as he used to do when a child, raised his eyes and said: 

“Lord, help me, teach me; come and enter within me and purify me of all this abomination.”

He prayed, asked God to help him and purify him, while that which he was praying for had already happened.  Not only did he feel the freedom, vigor and gladness of life, but he also felt the power of good.  He felt himself capable of doing the best that man can do.

There were tears in his eyes when he said these things—­tears of joy—­on the awakening within him of that spiritual being, and tears of emotion over his own virtue.

He felt warm and opened a window which looked into a garden.  It was a moonlit, fresh and quiet night.  Past the street rattled some vehicle, and then everything was quiet.  Directly beneath the window a tall, denuded poplar threw its shadow on the gravel of the landing-place, distinctly showing all the ramifications of its bare branches.  To the left the roof of a shed seemed white under the bright light of the moon; in front were the tangled branches of the trees, through which was seen the dark shadow of the garden inclosure.

Nekhludoff looked at the moonlit garden and roof, the shadows of the poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.

“How delightful!  My God, how delightful!” he said of that which was in his soul.

CHAPTER XXIX.

It was six o’clock when Maslova returned to her cell, weary and foot-sore from the long tramp over the stone pavement.  Besides, she was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence, and was also hungry.

When, during a recess, her guards had lunched on bread and hard-boiled eggs her mouth watered and she felt that she was hungry, but considered it humiliating to ask them for some food.  Three hours after that her hunger had passed, and she only felt weak.  In this condition she heard the sentence.  At first she thought that she misunderstood it; she could not believe what she heard, and could not reconcile herself to the idea that she was a convict.  But, seeing the calm, serious faces of the judges and the jury, who received the verdict as something quite natural, she revolted and cried out that she was innocent.  And when she saw also that her outcry, too, was taken as something natural and anticipated, and which could not alter the case, she began to weep.  She felt that she must submit to the cruel injustice which was perpetrated on her.  What surprised her most was that she should be so cruelly condemned by men—­not old men, but those same young men who looked at her so kindly.