el which Lukerya brought him.

'How is it that you have come back earlier than you said?' asked
Sergius. 'Can I speak to you now?'

'How is it that I have the happiness to receive such a guest? I have
missed one of my lessons. That can wait... I had always been planning
to go to see you. I wrote to you, and now this good fortune has come.'

'Pashenka, please listen to what I am going to tell you as to a
confession made to God at my last hour. Pashenka, I am not a holy man,
I am not even as good as a simple ordinary man; I am a loathsome,
vile, and proud sinner who has gone astray, and who, if not worse than
everyone else, is at least worse than most very bad people.'

Pashenka looked at him at first with staring eyes. But she believed what
he said, and when she had quite grasped it she touched his hand, smiling
pityingly, and said:

'Perhaps you exaggerate, Stiva?'

'No, Pashenka. I am an adulterer, a murderer, a blasphemer, and a
deceiver.'

'My God! How is that?' exclaimed Praskovya Mikhaylovna.

'But I must go on living. And I, who thought I knew everything, who
taught others how to live--I know nothing and ask you to teach me.'

'What are you saying, Stiva? You are laughing at me. Why do you always
make fun of me?'

'Well, if you think I am jesting you must have it as you please. But
tell me all the same how you live, and how you have lived your life.'

'I? I have lived a very nasty, horrible life, and now God is punishing
me as I deserve. I live so wretchedly, so wretchedly...'

'How was it with your marriage? How did you live with your husband?'

'It was all bad. I married because I fell in love in the nastiest way.
Papa did not approve. But I would not listen to anything and just
got married. Then instead of helping my husband I tormented him by my
jealousy, which I could not restrain.'

'I heard that he drank...'

'Yes, but I did not give him any peace. I always reproached him, though
you know it is a disease! He could not refrain from it. I now remember
how I tried to prevent his having it, and the frightful scenes we had!'

And she looked at Kasatsky with beautiful eyes, suffering from the
remembrance.

Kasatsky remembered how he had been told that Pashenka's husband used
to beat her, and now, looking at her thin withered neck with prominent
veins behind her ears, and her scanty coil of hair, half grey half
auburn, he seemed to see just how it had occurred.

'Then I was left with two chil