Still he would not give in to the feelings of repentance which began to arise within him.  He tried to consider it all as a coincidence, which would pass without infringing his manner of life.  He felt himself in the position of a puppy, when its master, taking it by the scruff of its neck, rubs its nose in the mess it has made.  The puppy whines, draws back and wants to get away as far as possible from the effects of its misdeed, but the pitiless master does not let go.

And so, Nekhludoff, feeling all the repulsiveness of what he had done, felt also the powerful hand of the Master, but he did not feel the whole significance of his action yet and would not recognise the Master’s hand.  He did not wish to believe that it was the effect of his deed that lay before him, but the pitiless hand of the Master held him and he felt he could not get away.  He was still keeping up his courage and sat on his chair in the first row in his usual self-possessed pose, one leg carelessly thrown over the other, and playing with his pince-nez.  Yet all the while, in the depths of his soul, he felt the cruelty, cowardice and baseness, not only of this particular action of his but of his whole self-willed, depraved, cruel, idle life; and that dreadful veil which had in some unaccountable manner hidden from him this sin of his and the whole of his subsequent life was beginning to shake, and he caught glimpses of what was covered by that veil.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The trial—­the verdict.

At last the president finished his speech, and lifting the list of questions with a graceful movement of his arm he handed it to the foreman, who came up to take it.  The jury, glad to be able to get into the debating-court, got up one after the other and left the room, looking as if a bit ashamed of themselves and again not knowing what to do with their hands.  As soon as the door was closed behind them a gendarme came up to it, pulled his sword out of the scabbard, and, holding it up against his shoulder, stood at the door.  The judges got up and went away.  The prisoners were also led out.  When the jury came into the debating-room the first thing they did was to take out their cigarettes, as before, and begin smoking.  The sense of the unnaturalness and falseness of their position, which all of them had experienced while sitting in their places in the court, passed when they entered the debating-room and started smoking, and they settled down with a feeling of relief and at once began an animated conversation.

“’Tisn’t the girl’s fault.  She’s got mixed up in it,” said the kindly merchant.  “We must recommend her to mercy.”

“That’s just what we are going to consider,” said the foreman.  “We must not give way to our personal impressions.”

“The president’s summing up was good,” remarked the colonel.

“Good?  Why, it nearly sent me to sleep!”