do now everything in my power. Tell me----"

"How did you find me?" she asked without answering his question, her
squinting eyes looking and not looking at him.

"Oh, Lord! Help me, teach me what to do!" Nekhludoff said to himself
as he looked at her face so completely changed.

"I was on the jury when you were tried," he said. "You did not
recognize me?"

"No, I did not. I had no time to recognize you. Besides, I did not
look," she answered.

"Wasn't there a child?" he asked, and he felt his face turning red.

"It died at that time, thank God," she said with bitterness, turning
away her head.

"How did it happen?"

"I was ill myself--nearly died," she said without raising her eyes.

"How could the aunts let you go?"

"Who would keep a servant with a child? As soon as they noticed it
they drove me out. But what is the use of talking! I don't remember
anything. It is all over now."

"No, it is not over. I cannot leave it thus. I now wish to atone for
my sin."

"There is nothing to atone for; what's gone is gone," she said, and,
all unexpected to him, she suddenly looked at him and smiled in an
alluring and piteous manner.

His appearance was entirely unexpected to Maslova, especially at this
time and place, and therefore the astonishment of the first moment
brought to her mind that of which she never thought before. At the
first moment she hazily recalled that new, wonderful world of feeling
and thought which had been opened to her by that charming young man
who loved her, and whom she loved, and then his inexplicable cruelty
and the long chain of humiliation and suffering which followed as the
direct result of that enchanting bliss, and it pained her. But being
unable to account for it all, she did the customary thing for
her--banished all these recollections from her mind, and endeavored to
obscure them by a life of dissipation. At first she associated this
man who sat beside her with that young man whom she had loved once,
but as the thought pained her, she drove it from her mind. And now
this neatly dressed gentleman, with perfumed beard, was to her not
that Nekhludoff whom she had loved, but one of those people who, as
opportunity afforded, were taking advantage of such creatures as she,
and of whom such creatures as she ought to take advantage as
opportunity offers. For this reason she smiled alluringly.

She was silent, thinking how to profit by him.

"All that is over now," she said. "And her