the cards in his hands and began to look through the window.  She tapped again, and pressed her face against the window-pane.  At that moment the car beside which she stood was tugged forward, and it moved along.  She ran alongside, looking in the window.  The officer tried to lower the window, but could not.  Nekhludoff rose, and, pushing the officer aside, began lowering it.  The train went faster, so that Katiousha was obliged to run.  The train moved still faster when the window was lowered.  At that moment the conductor pushed her aside and jumped on the car.  She fell back, but continued to run along the wet boards of the platform, and when she reached the end of the platform and began to descend the steps to the ground, she almost fell exhausted.  The first-class car was far ahead of her, and while she was running the second-class cars passed her, then came with greater speed those of the third class.  When the last car with the lanterns flew by her she was already beyond the water-tank, unsheltered from the wind which lashed her, blowing the shawl from her head and tangling her feet in her skirt.  But still she ran on.

“Aunt Michaelovna!” shouted the little girl, “you have lost your shawl.”

Katiousha stopped, threw back her head, and, covering her face with her hands, began to sob.

“He is gone!” she cried.

“While he is in a lighted car, sitting on a plush seat, jesting and drinking, I stand here in the mud, rain and wind, crying,” she thought.  She sat down on the ground and began to sob aloud.  The little girl was frightened, and, embracing her wet clothing, she said: 

“Auntie, let’s go home.”

“I will wait for the next train, throw myself under the wheels, and that will end it all,” Katiousha was meanwhile thinking, not heeding the girl.

She made up her mind to carry out her intention.  But as it always happens in the first moment of calm after a period of agitation, the child, his child, suddenly shuddered.  Immediately all that which so tortured her that she was willing to die, all her wrath and her desire to revenge herself even by death, passed.  She became calm, arranged her clothing, put the shawl on her head, and went away.

She returned home exhausted, wet and muddy.  From that day began in her that spiritual transformation which ended in her present condition.  From that terrible night on she ceased to believe in God and in goodness.  Before that night she herself believed in God, and believed that other people believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced that no one believed, and all that was said of God and His law was false and wrong.  The one whom she loved, and who loved her—­she knew it—­abandoned her and made sport of her feelings.  And he was the best of all the men she knew.  All the others were even worse.  This she saw confirmed in all that had happened.  His aunts, pious old ladies, drove her out when she was no longer as useful as she