At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about what he was saying.  Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector’s side, looked round with strained curiosity.  A little boy with closely-cropped hair came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.

“And whom are you waiting for?”

Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his acquaintance.

“Is she, then, your sister?” the boy asked.

“No, not my sister,” Nekhludoff answered in surprise.

“And with whom are you here?” he inquired of the boy.

“I?  With mamma; she is a political one,” he replied.

“Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!” said the inspector, evidently considering Nekhludoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.

Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff’s attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps, approached Nekhludoff and the boy.

“What is he asking you?  Who you are?” she inquired with a slight smile, and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind, prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.

“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with so sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to smile back.

“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”

“Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers.  You know it is,” said the inspector.

“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the consumptive lad’s mother, holding Kolia’s little hand in her large, white one, while he continued gazing up into her face.

“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.

“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,” said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how exceptional his establishment was.

“Is it possible?”

“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”

“And that young girl?”

“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders.  “Besides, here is Doukhova.”

CHAPTER LV.

VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.

Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait, the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.

“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand.  “Do you remember me?  Let us sit down.”

“I did not expect to see you like this.”

“Oh, I am very happy.  It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire nothing better,” said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty collar of her bodice.  Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.