a
similar mood. But she was entirely different to-day; there was
something new in the expression of her face; something timid and
reserved, and, as it seemed to him, malevolent toward him. He repeated
the words he had said to the physician and handed her the envelope
with the photograph which he had brought from Panov.

"It is an old picture which I came across in Panov. It may please you
to have it. Take it."

Raising her black eyebrows she looked at him with her squinting eyes,
as though asking, "What is that for?" Then she silently took the
envelope and tucked it under her apron.

"I saw your aunt there," said Nekhludoff.

"Did you?" she said, with indifference.

"How do you fare here?" asked Nekhludoff.

"Fairly well," she said.

"It is not very hard?"

"Not very. I am not used to it yet."

"I am very glad. At any rate, it is better than there."

"Than where?" she said, and her face became purple.

"There, in the prison," Nekhludoff hastened to say.

"Why better?" she asked.

"I think the people here are better. There are no such people here as
there."

"There are many good people there."

"I did what I could for the Menshovs and hope they will be freed,"
said Nekhludoff.

"May God grant it. Such a wonderful little woman," she said, repeating
her description of the old woman, and slightly smiled.

"I am going to-day to St. Petersburg. Your case will be heard soon,
and, I hope, will be reversed."

"It is all the same now, whether they reverse it or not," she said.

"Why now?"

"So," she answered, and stealthily glanced at him inquiringly.

Nekhludoff understood this answer and this glance as a desire on her
part to know if he were still holding to his decision, or had changed
it since her refusal.

"I don't know why it is all the same to you," he said, "but to me it
really is all the same whether you are acquitted or not. In either
case, I am ready to do what I said," he said, with determination.

She raised her head, and her black, squinting eyes fixed themselves on
his face and past it, and her whole face became radiant with joy. But
her words were in an entirely different strain.

"Oh, you needn't talk that way," she said.

"I say it that you may know."

"Everything has been already said, and there is no use talking any
more," she said, with difficulty repressing a smile.

There was some noise in the ward. A child was heard crying.

"I think I am called," she said, looking ar