Him either?"

"No!" said the girl briefly, shaking her head.

"And I don't believe you!" the mother ejaculated in a sudden burst of
excitement. Quickly wiping her charcoal-blackened hands on her apron
she continued, with deep conviction in her voice:

"You don't understand your own faith! How could you live the kind of
life you are living, without faith in God?"

A loud stamping of feet and a murmur of voices were heard on the porch.
The mother started; the girl quickly rose to her feet, and whispered
hurriedly:

"Don't open the door! If it's the gendarmes, you don't know me. I
walked into the wrong house, came here by accident, fainted away, you
undressed me, and found the books around me. You understand?"

"Why, my dear, what for?" asked the mother tenderly.

"Wait a while!" said Sashenka listening. "I think it's Yegor."

It was Yegor, wet and out of breath.

"Aha! The samovar!" he cried. "That's the best thing in life, granny!
You here already, Sashenka?"

His hoarse voice filled the little kitchen. He slowly removed his
heavy ulster, talking all the time.

"Here, granny, is a girl who is a thorn in the flesh of the police!
Insulted by the overseer of the prison, she declared that she would
starve herself to death if he did not ask her pardon. And for eight
days she went without eating, and came within a hair's breadth of
dying. It's not bad! She must have a mighty strong little stomach."

"Is it possible you took no food for eight days in succession?" asked
the mother in amazement.

"I had to get him to beg my pardon," answered the girl with a stoical
shrug of her shoulders. Her composure and her stern persistence seemed
almost like a reproach to the mother.

"And suppose you had died?" she asked again.

"Well, what can one do?" the girl said quietly. "He did beg my pardon
after all. One ought never to forgive an insult, never!"

"Ye-es!" responded the mother slowly. "Here are we women who are
insulted all our lives long."

"I have unloaded myself!" announced Yegor from the other room. "Is the
samovar ready? Let me take it in!"

He lifted the samovar and talked as he carried it.

"My own father used to drink not less than twenty glasses of tea a day,
wherefor his days upon earth were long, peaceful, and strong; for he
lived to be seventy-three years old, never having suffered from any
ailment whatsoever. In weight he reached the respectable figure of
three hundred and twenty