"Katerina Michaelovna, you've lost your shawl!" screamed the
little girl, who was trying to keep up with her.
Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it
with both hands sobbed aloud. "Gone!" she screamed.
"He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in
a brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the
darkness, in the wind and the rain, am standing and weeping," she
thought to herself; and sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud
that the little girl got frightened, and put her arms round her,
wet as she was.
"Come home, dear," she said.
"When a train passes--then under a carriage, and there will be an
end," Katusha was thinking, without heeding the girl.
And she made up her mind to do it, when, as it always happens,
when a moment of quiet follows great excitement, he, the
child--his child--made himself known within her. Suddenly all
that a moment before had been tormenting her, so that it had
seemed impossible to live, all her bitterness towards him, and
the wish to revenge herself, even by dying, passed away; she grew
quieter, got up, put the shawl on her head, and went home.
Wet, muddy, and quite exhausted, she returned, and from that day
the change which brought her where she now was began to operate
in her soul. Beginning from that dreadful night, she ceased
believing in God and in goodness. She had herself believed in
God, and believed that other people also believed in Him; but
after that night she became convinced that no one believed, and
that all that was said about God and His laws was deception and
untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved her--yes, she knew
that--had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet he was the
best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still worse.
All that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this
belief at every step. His aunts, the pious old ladies, turned her
out when she could no longer serve them as she used to. And of
all those she met, the women used her as a means of getting
money, the men, from the old police officer down to the warders
of the prison, looked at her as on an object for pleasure. And no
one in the world cared for aught but pleasure. In this belief the
old author with whom she had come together in the second year of
her life of independence had strengthened her. He had told her
outright that it was this that constituted the happiness of life,
and he called it poetical and aesthetic.
Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the
talk concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if
sometimes doubts arose in her mind and she wondered why
everything was so ill-arranged in the world that all hurt each
other, and made each other suffer, she thought it best not to
dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could smoke, or,
better still, drink, and it would pass.