“What am I to say?” said Nekhludoff.  “I am very glad she has found such a protector as you—­”

“That’s what I wanted to know,” Simonson interrupted.

“I wanted to know if, loving her and wishing her happiness, you would consider it good for her to marry me?”

“Oh, yes,” said Nekhludoff decidedly.

“It all depends on her; I only wish that this suffering soul should find rest,” said Simonson, with such childlike tenderness as no one could have expected from so morose-looking a man.

Simonson rose, and stretching his lips out to Nekhludoff, smiled shyly and kissed him.

“So I shall tell her,” and he went away.

CHAPTER XVII.

“I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY.”

“What do you think of that?” said Mary Pavlovna.  “In love—­quite in love.  Now, that’s a thing I never should have expected, that Valdemar Simonson should be in love, and in the silliest, most boyish manner.  It is strange, and, to say the truth, it is sad,” and she sighed.

“But she?  Katusha?  How does she look at it, do you think?” Nekhludoff asked.

“She?” Mary Pavlovna waited, evidently wishing to give as exact an answer as possible.  “She?  Well, you see, in spite of her past she has one of the most moral natures—­and such fine feelings.  She loves you—­loves you well, and is happy to be able to do you even the negative good of not letting you get entangled with her.  Marriage with you would be a terrible fall for her, worse than all that’s past, and therefore she will never consent to it.  And yet your presence troubles her.”

“Well, what am I to do?  Ought I to vanish?”

Mary Pavlovna smiled her sweet, childlike smile, and said, “Yes, partly.”

“How is one to vanish partly?”

“I am talking nonsense.  But as for her, I should like to tell you that she probably sees the silliness of this rapturous kind of love (he has not spoken to her), and is both flattered and afraid of it.  I am not competent to judge in such affairs, you know, still I believe that on his part it is the most ordinary man’s feeling, though it is masked.  He says that this love arouses his energy and is Platonic, but I know that even if it is exceptional, still at the bottom it is degrading.”

Mary Pavlovna had wandered from the subject, having started on her favourite theme.

“Well, but what am I to do?” Nekhludoff asked.

“I think you should tell her everything; it is always best that everything should be clear.  Have a talk with her; I shall call her.  Shall I?” said Mary Pavlovna.

“If you please,” said Nekhludoff, and Mary Pavlovna went.

A strange feeling overcame Nekhludoff when he was alone in the little room with the sleeping Vera Doukhova, listening to her soft breathing, broken now and then by moans, and to the incessant dirt that came through the two doors that separated him from the criminals.  What Simonson had told him freed him from the self-imposed duty, which had seemed hard and strange to him in his weak moments, and yet now he felt something that was not merely unpleasant but painful.