again repeated to himself, glancing at the
half-nude woman with splendid marble shoulders and arms and a
triumphant smile on her lips. The bared bosom of that portrait
reminded him of another young woman whom he had seen dressed in a
similar way a few days before. It was Missy, who had invited him to
the house under some pretext, in order to display before him her
ball-dress. He recalled with disgust her beautiful shoulders and arms;
and her coarse, brutal father, with his dark past, his cruelties, and
her mother with her doubtful reputation. All this was disgusting and
at the same time shameful.

"No, no; I must free myself from all these false relations with the
Korchagins, with Maria Vasilievna, with the inheritance and all the
rest," he thought. "Yes, to breathe freely; to go abroad--to Rome--and
continue to work on my picture." He remembered his doubts about his
talent. "Well, it is all the same; I will simply breathe freely.
First, I will go to Constantinople, then to Rome--away from this jury
duty. Yes, and to fix matters with the lawyer----"

And suddenly, before his imagination, appeared with uncommon vividness
the picture of the prisoner with the black, squinting eyes. And how
she wept when the last words of the prisoners were spoken! He hastily
crushed the cigarette he was smoking, lit another, and began pacing up
and down the room. One after another the scenes he had lived through
with her rose up in his mind. He recalled their last meeting, the
passion which seized him at the time, and the disappointment that
followed. He recalled the white dress with the blue ribbon; he
recalled the morning mass. "Why, I loved her with a pure love that
night; I loved her even before, and how I loved her when I first came
to my aunts and was writing my composition!" That freshness, youth,
fullness of life swept over him and he became painfully sad.

The difference between him as he was then and as he was now was great;
it was equally great, if not greater, than the difference between
Katiousha in the church and that girl whom they had tried this
morning. Then he was a courageous, free man, before whom opened
endless possibilities; now he felt himself caught in the tenets of a
stupid, idle, aimless, miserable life, from which there was no escape;
aye, from which, for the most part, he would not escape. He
remembered how he once had prided himself upon his rectitude; how he
always made it a rule to tell the truth, and was