I’ll give you some tea with raspberry jam in it.”

“That would be good! But why should you be troubling yourself? It’s late. Let me do it myself…”

“When you’re tired?” the mother responded reproachfully, starting to busy herself by the samovar. Sasha, too, went through into the kitchen, sat down there on a bench and, putting her hands up behind her head, began:

“Prison does weaken you, though. The damned idleness! There’s nothing more agonizing. You know how much you need to work, yet you’re sitting in a cage like an animal…”

“Who is it that rewards you for everything?” the mother asked. And with a sigh she answered herself: “No one but the Lord! I dare say you don’t believe in Him either?”

“No!” the girl replied tersely with a shake of the head.

“Well, I don’t believe you!” declared the mother, suddenly becoming excited. And quickly wiping her charcoal-stained hands on her apron, she continued with deep conviction: “You just don’t understand your faith! How is it possible to lead such a life without faith in God?”

Someone began stamping loudly and grumbling in the lobby, the mother gave a start, and the girl leapt up quickly with a hurried whisper:

“Don’t open up! If it’s them, the gendarmes, you don’t know me!… I got the wrong house, came in here to you by accident, fainted, and you took my things off and found the booklets – understand?”

“My dear girl, why?” the mother asked, touched.

“Wait!” said Sashenka, listening intently. “I think it’s Yegor…”

It was him, wet, and panting wearily.

“Aha! The good old samovar?” he exclaimed. “That’s the best thing in life, Mamasha! You’re here already, Sashenka?”

Filling the little kitchen with the noise of his wheezing, he slowly dragged his coat off and, without stopping, said:

“Here’s an unpleasant girl for the authorities, Mamasha! After mistreatment by the prison governor, she announced to him that she’d be starving herself to death if he didn’t apologize to her, and she didn’t eat for eight days, for which reason she all but turned up her toes. Not bad, eh? And how about my belly?”

Chattering away and holding up his outrageously sagging stomach with his short arms, he went through into the other room and closed the door behind him, but there too he carried on saying something.

“Did you really not eat for eight days?” asked the mother in surprise.

“He had to apologize to me!” the girl replied, moving her shoulders about from the cold. Her serenity and stern insistence found a response in the mother’s soul that was somewhat akin to reproach.

“Upon my word!…” she thought, and then asked again: “And if you’d died?”

“What can you do?” the girl responded quietly. “He did apologize after all. People shouldn’t forgive mistreatment.”

“Ye-es,” the mother responded slowly. “But the likes of us have been mistreated all our lives…”

“I’ve unloaded!” announced Yegor, opening the door. “Is the good old samovar ready? Permit me to lug it in…”

He picked the samovar up and set off with it, saying:

“My daddy personally drank no fewer than twenty glasses of tea a day, and thus lived on this earth painlessly and peaceably for seventy-three years. He weighed eight poods* and was sexton in the village of Voskresenskoye…”

“You’re Father Ivan’s son?” exclaimed the mother.

“Precisely! And how is this fact known to you?”

“Why, I’m from Voskresenskoye!…”

“A fellow countrywoman? Which family would you be from?”

“Your neighbours’! I’m a Seryogin.”

“The daughter of lame Nil? A figure familiar to me, for more than once did he box my ears…”

They stood opposite one another, showering each other with questions and laughing. Sashenka looked at them with a smile and started brewing the tea. The clatter of the crockery brought the mother back to the present.

“Oh, excuse me, I got carried away talking! It’s ever so nice to see a fellow countryman…”

“I’m the one who should be excused for taking charge here! But it’s already gone ten, and I have a long way to go…”

“To go where? To town?” the mother asked in surprise.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean? It’s dark, wet – you’re tired! Spend the night here! Yegor Ivanovich can go to bed in the kitchen, and you and me here…”

“No, I ought to go!” the girl declared simply.

“Yes, fellow countrywoman, the young lady’s required to disappear. She’s known round here. And if she appears on the street tomorrow, that won’t be good!” Yegor declared.

“But how? Will she go alone?…”

“She will!” said Yegor with a grin.

The girl poured herself some tea, took a piece of rye bread, salted it and began to eat, gazing pensively at the mother.

“How is it you go walking about? You and Natasha? I wouldn’t go – it’s frightening!” said Vlasova.

“And she’s frightened too!” remarked Yegor. “Are you frightened, Sasha?”

“Of course!” the girl replied.

The mother glanced at her and at Yegor and then quietly exclaimed:

“How… stern you are!”

After drinking her tea, Sashenka silently shook Yegor’s hand and went into the kitchen, and the mother went out after her to see her off. In the kitchen Sashenka said:

“When you see Pavel Mikhailovich, give him my greetings! Please!”

And after taking hold of the door catch, she suddenly turned and asked in a low voice:

“May I give you a kiss?”

The mother silently embraced her and gave her an ardent kiss.

“Thank you!” the girl said quietly, and with a nod of the head she left.

Going back into the other room, the mother glanced anxiously out of the window. Wet flakes of snow were falling heavily in the darkness.

“And do you remember the Prozorovs?” Yegor asked.

He was sitting with his feet set wide apart and blowing loudly on his glass of tea. His face was red, sweaty and contented.

“I do, I do!” said the mother pensively, sidling up to the table. She sat down and, gazing at Yegor with sad eyes, drawled out slowly: “Dear, oh dear! Sashenka, how’s she going to get there?”

“She’ll be tired!” Yegor agreed. “Prison’s shaken her badly; the girl used to be stronger… What’s more, she had a gentle upbringing… She seems to have ruined her lungs already…”

“Who is she?” the mother enquired quietly.

“The daughter of a landowner. Her father’s a great scoundrel, so she says. Are you aware, Mamasha, that they want to get married?”

“Who?”

“She and Pavel… But they can never manage it – he’s at large while she’s in prison, and vice versa!”

“I didn’t know that!” the mother replied after a pause. “Pasha never says anything about himself…”

Now she felt even sorrier for the girl and, glancing at her guest with involuntary aversion, she said:

“You should be seeing her back!…”

“I can’t!” Yegor replied calmly. “I’ve got a heap of things to do here, and I’m going to have to be on my feet all the time from early morning.