Again the inspector considered for a moment.
"Ah, well, she can be brought out here for awhile. Mary
Karlovna," turning to the warder, "lead Maslova out."
A minute later Maslova came out of the side door. Stepping
softly, she came up close to Nekhludoff, stopped, and looked up
at him from under her brows. Her black hair was arranged in
ringlets over her forehead in the same way as it had been two
days ago; her face, though unhealthy and puffy, was attractive,
and looked perfectly calm, only the glittering black eyes glanced
strangely from under the swollen lids.
"You may talk here," said the inspector, and shrugging his
shoulders he stepped aside with a look of surprise. Nekhludoff
moved towards a seat by the wall.
Maslova cast a questioning look at the inspector, and then,
shrugging her shoulders in surprise, followed Nekhludoff to the
bench, and having arranged her skirt, sat down beside him.
"I know it is hard for you to forgive me," he began, but stopped.
His tears were choking him. "But though I can't undo the past, I
shall now do what is in my power. Tell me--"
"How have you managed to find me?" she said, without answering
his question, neither looking away from him nor quite at him,
with her squinting eyes.
"O God, help me! Teach me what to do," Nekhludoff thought,
looking at her changed face. "I was on the jury the day before
yesterday," he said. "You did not recognise me?"
"No, I did not; there was not time for recognitions. I did not
even look," she said.
"There was a child, was there not?" he asked.
"Thank God! he died at once," she answered, abruptly and
viciously.
"What do you mean? Why?"
"I was so ill myself, I nearly died," she said, in the same quiet
voice, which Nekhludoff had not expected and could not
understand.
"How could my aunts have let you go?"
"Who keeps a servant that has a baby? They sent me off as soon as
they noticed. But why speak of this? I remember nothing. That's
all finished."
"No, it is not finished; I wish to redeem my sin."
"There's nothing to redeem. What's been has been and is passed,"
she said; and, what he never expected, she looked at him and
smiled in an unpleasantly luring, yet piteous, manner.
Maslova never expected to see him again, and certainly not here
and not now; therefore, when she first recognised him, she could
not keep back the memories which she never wished to revive. In
the first moment she remembered dimly that new, wonderful world
of feeling and of thought which had been opened to her by the
charming young man who loved her and whom she loved, and then his
incomprehensible cruelty and the whole string of humiliations and
suffering which flowed from and followed that magic joy. This
gave her pain, and, unable to understand it, she did what she was
always in the habit of doing, she got rid of these memories by
enveloping them in the mist of a depraved life. In the first
moment, she associated the man now sitting beside her with the
lad she had loved; but feeling that this gave her pain, she
dissociated them again. Now, this well-dressed, carefully-got-up
gentleman with perfumed beard was no longer the Nekhludoff whom
she had loved but only one of the people who made use of
creatures like herself when they needed them, and whom creatures
like herself had to make use of in their turn as profitably as
they could; and that is why she looked at him with a luring smile
and considered silently how she could best make use of him.