Kartinkin stood holding his arms close to his sides and moving his lips.  Botchkova seemed perfectly calm.  Maslova, when she heard the sentence, blushed scarlet.  “I’m not guilty, not guilty!” she suddenly cried, so that it resounded through the room.  “It is a sin!  I am not guilty!  I never wished—­I never thought!  It is the truth I am saying—­the truth!” and sinking on the bench she burst into tears and sobbed aloud.  When Kartinkin and Botchkova went out she still sat crying, so that a gendarme had to touch the sleeve of her cloak.

“No; it is impossible to leave it as it is,” said Nekhludoff to himself, utterly forgetting his bad thoughts.  He did not know why he wished to look at her once more, but hurried out into the corridor.  There was quite a crowd at the door.  The advocates and jury were going out, pleased to have finished the business, and he was obliged to wait a few seconds, and when he at last got out into the corridor she was far in front.  He hurried along the corridor after her, regardless of the attention he was arousing, caught her up, passed her, and stopped.  She had ceased crying and only sobbed, wiping her red, discoloured face with the end of the kerchief on her head.  She passed without noticing him.  Then he hurried back to see the president.  The latter had already left the court, and Nekhludoff followed him into the lobby and went up to him just as he had put on his light grey overcoat and was taking the silver-mounted walking-stick which an attendant was handing him.

“Sir, may I have a few words with you concerning some business I have just decided upon?” said Nekhludoff.  “I am one of the jury.”

“Oh, certainly, Prince Nekhludoff.  I shall be delighted.  I think we have met before,” said the president, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand and recalling with pleasure the evening when he first met Nekhludoff, and when he had danced so gaily, better than all the young people.  “What can I do for you?”

“There is a mistake in the answer concerning Maslova.  She is not guilty of the poisoning and yet she is condemned to penal servitude,” said Nekhludoff, with a preoccupied and gloomy air.

“The Court passed the sentence in accordance with the answers you yourselves gave,” said the president, moving towards the front door; “though they did not seem to be quite in accord.”  And he remembered that he had been going to explain to the jury that a verdict of “guilty” meant guilty of intentional murder unless the words “without intent to take life” were added, but had, in his hurry to get the business over, omitted to do so.

“Yes, but could not the mistake be rectified?”

“A reason for an appeal can always be found.  You will have to speak to an advocate,” said the president, putting on his hat a little to one side and continuing to move towards the door.

“But this is terrible.”

“Well, you see, there were two possibilities before Maslova,” said the president, evidently wishing to be as polite and pleasant to Nekhludoff as he could.  Then, having arranged his whiskers over his coat collar, he put his hand lightly under Nekhludoff’s elbow, and, still directing his steps towards the front door, he said, “You are going, too?”