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Tell me, my dear . . . tell me, is it true? "Yes, it's true; he is dead," answered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "That is awful, awful, my dear! But there's no evil without some compensation; your husband was no doubt a noble, wonderful, holy man, and such are more needed in Heaven than on earth."
Next morning when Samoylenko, attired, as it was a holiday, in full-dress uniform with epaulettes on his shoulders and decorations on his breast, came out of the bedroom after feeling Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's pulse and looking at her tongue, Laevsky, who was standing in the doorway, asked him anxiously: "Well? Well?" There was an expression of terror, of extreme uneasiness, and of hope on his face.
"I am speaking of Laevsky. He has a great many acquaintances. But unfortunately his mother is a proud aristocrat, not very intelligent. . . ." Nadyezhda Fyodorovna threw herself into the water without finishing; Marya Konstantinovna and Katya made their way in after her. "There are so many conventional ideas in the world," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went on, "and life is not so easy as it seems."
"It's nothing, it's nothing," Samoylenko kept saying; "it does happen . . . it does happen. . . ." Chill with horror, trembling all over and dreading something awful, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna stood by the bedside and kept asking: "What is it? What is it? For God's sake, tell me." "Can Kirilin have written him something?" she thought.
After to-morrow you are perfectly free and can go wherever you like with any one you choose. To-day and to-morrow." Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped. "Let me go," she murmured, trembling all over and seeing nothing before her in the darkness but his white tunic. "You're right: I'm a horrible woman. . . . I'm to blame, but let me go . . . I beg you."
Beside us was a little sledge lined with bright red cloth. "Let us go down, Nadyezhda Petrovna!" I besought her. "Only once! I assure you we shall be all right and not hurt." But Nadenka was afraid. The slope from her little goloshes to the bottom of the ice hill seemed to her a terrible, immensely deep abyss.
Like a far-away dim light in the fields, the thought sometimes flickered in his mind that in one of the side-streets of Petersburg, in the remote future, he would have to have recourse to a tiny lie in order to get rid of Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and pay his debts; he would tell a lie only once, and then a completely new life would begin.
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said sharply, on that beautiful, marvellous evening, looking at him with terror and asking herself with bewilderment, could there really have been a moment when that man attracted her and had been near to her?
"We must have a little talk," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna read in a little note; she glanced at Marya Konstantinovna, who gave her an almond-oily smile and nodded. "Talk of what?" thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "If one can't tell the whole, it's no use talking." Before going out for the evening she had tied Laevsky's cravat for him, and that simple action filled her soul with tenderness and sorrow.
"My dear, my dear, what are you saying!" exclaimed Marya Konstantinovna, stepping back and flinging up her hands. "You are talking wildly! Think what you are saying. You must settle down!" "'Settle down. How do you mean? I have not lived yet, and you tell me to settle down." Nadyezhda Fyodorovna reflected that she really had not lived.
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