“I found this in Panovo—­it’s an old photo; perhaps you would like it.  Take it.”

Lifting her dark eyebrows, she looked at him with surprise in her squinting eyes, as if asking, “What is this for?” took the photo silently and put it in the bib of her apron.

“I saw your aunt there,” said Nekhludoff.

“Did you?” she said, indifferently.

“Are you all right here?” Nekhludoff asked.

“Oh, yes, it’s all right,” she said.

“Not too difficult?”

“Oh, no.  But I am not used to it yet.”

“I am glad, for your sake.  Anyhow, it is better than there.”

“Than where—­there?” she asked, her face flushing again.

“There—­in the prison,” Nekhludoff hurriedly answered.

“Why better?” she asked.

“I think the people are better.  Here are none such as there must be there.”

“There are many good ones there,” she said.

“I have been seeing about the Menshoffs, and hope they will be liberated,” said Nekhludoff.

“God grant they may.  Such a splendid old woman,” she said, again repeating her opinion of the old woman, and slightly smiling.

“I am going to Petersburg to-day.  Your case will come on soon, and I hope the sentence will be repealed.”

“Whether it is repealed or not won’t matter now,” she said.

“Why not now?”

“So,” she said, looking with a quick, questioning glance into his eyes.

Nekhludoff understood the word and the look to mean that she wished to know whether he still kept firm to his decision or had accepted her refusal.

“I do not know why it does not matter to you,” he said.  “It certainly does not matter as far as I am concerned whether you are acquitted or not.  I am ready to do what I told you in any case,” he said decidedly.

She lifted her head and her black squinting eyes remained fixed on him and beyond him, and her face beamed with joy.  But the words she spoke were very different from what her eyes said.

“You should not speak like that,” she said.

“I am saying it so that you should know.”

“Everything has been said about that, and there is no use speaking,” she said, with difficulty repressing a smile.

A sudden noise came from the hospital ward, and the sound of a child crying.

“I think they are calling me,” she said, and looked round uneasily.

“Well, good-bye, then,” he said.  She pretended not to see his extended hand, and, without taking it, turned away and hastily walked along the strip of carpet, trying to hide the triumph she felt.

“What is going on in her?  What is she thinking?  What does she feel?  Does she mean to prove me, or can she really not forgive me?  Is it that she cannot or that she will not express what she feels and thinks?  Has she softened or hardened?” he asked himself, and could find no answer.  He only knew that she had altered and that an important change was going on in her soul, and this change united him not only to her but also to Him for whose sake that change was being wrought.  And this union brought on a state of joyful animation and tenderness.