bow in her dishevelled hair, weak, jaded and tipsy, after dancing attendance upon the guest, had seated herself, at two in the morning, near the thin, bony, pimpled girl-pianist and complained of her hard life.  The girl said that her life was also disagreeable to her, and that she wished to change her occupation.  Afterward their friend Clara joined them, and all three suddenly decided to change their life.  They were about to leave the place when the drunken guests became noisy, the fiddler struck up a lively song of the first figure of a Russian quadrille, the pianist began to thump in unison, a little drunken man in a white necktie and dress coat caught her up.  Another man, stout and bearded, and also in a dress coat, seized Clara, and for a long time they whirled, danced, shouted and drank.  Thus a year passed, a second and a third.  How could she help changing!  And the cause of it all was he.  And suddenly her former wrath against him rose in her; and she felt like chiding and reproving him.  She was sorry that she had missed the opportunity of telling him again that she knew him, and would not yield to him; that she would not allow him to take advantage of her spiritually as he had done corporeally; that she would not allow him to make her the subject of his magnanimity.  And in order to deaden the painful feeling of pity for herself and the useless reprobation of him, she yearned for wine.  And she would have broken her word and drunk some wine had she been in the prison.  But here wine could only be obtained from the assistant surgeon, and she was afraid of him, because he pursued her with his attentions, and all relations with men were disgusting to her.  For some time she sat on a bench in the corridor, and returning to her closet, without heeding her companion’s questions, she wept for a long time over her ruined life.

CHAPTER IX.

Nekhludoff had four cases in hand:  Maslova’s appeal, the petition of Theodosia Birukova, the case of Shustova’s release, by request of Vera Bogodukhovskaia, and the obtaining of permission for a mother to visit her son kept in a fortress, also by Bogodukhovskaia’s request.

Since his visit to Maslenikoff, especially since his trip to the country, Nekhludoff felt an aversion for that sphere in which he had been living heretofore, and in which the sufferings borne by millions of people in order to secure the comforts and pleasures of a few, were so carefully concealed that the people of that sphere did not and could not see these sufferings, and consequently the cruelty and criminality of their own lives.

Nekhludoff could no longer keep up relations with these people without reproving himself.  And yet the habits of his past life, the ties of friendship and kinship, and especially his one great aim of helping Maslova and the other unfortunates, drew him into that sphere against his will; and he was compelled to ask the aid and services of people whom he had not only ceased to respect but who called forth his indignation and contempt.