Nekhludoff when he entered the room.  It was absolutely impossible to understand the conversations.  Only by the expression of the people’s faces could one judge what they were speaking about, and what relation the speakers sustained toward each other.  Near Nekhludoff was an old woman with a small ’kerchief on her head, who, with trembling chin, shouted to a pale young man with head half shaven.  The prisoner, knitting his brow, was listening to her with raised eyebrows.  Beside the old woman stood a young man in a long coat, who was nodding his head while listening to a prisoner with a weary face and beard turning gray, who greatly resembled him.  Further on stood a ragamuffin waving his hand, shouting and laughing.  On the floor beside this man sat a woman in a good woolen dress, with a child in her arms.  She wept bitterly, evidently seeing for the first time that gray-haired man on the other side of the net, manacled, in a prison jacket, and with head half shaven.  Over this woman stood the bank employee shouting at the top of his voice to a bald-headed prisoner with shining eyes.

Nekhludoff remained in this room about five minutes, experiencing a strange feeling of anguish, a consciousness of his impotence at the discord in the world, and he was seized with a sensation like a rocking on board of a ship.

“But I must fulfill my mission,” he said to himself, taking heart.  “What am I to do?”

As he looked around for some officer, he saw a middle-sized man with mustache, wearing epaulets, who was walking behind the crowd.

“Sir, could you not tell me where the women are kept, and where it is permitted to see them?” he asked, making a particular effort to be polite.

“You wish to go to the women’s ward?”

“Yes; I would like to see one of the women prisoners,” Nekhludoff said, with the same strained politeness.

“You should have said so in the meeting-room.  Whom do you wish to see, then?”

“I wish to see Katherine Maslova.”

“Has she been sentenced?”

“Yes, she was sentenced the other day,” he said humbly, as if fearing to ruffle the temper of the officer, who seemed to be interested in him.

“Then this way, please,” said the inspector, who had evidently decided from Nekhludoff’s appearance that he deserved attention.  “Sidoroff!” he turned to a warrant-officer wearing a mustache, and medals on his breast.  “Show this gentleman to the women’s ward.”

“All right, sir.”

At that moment heart-rending cries came from the direction of the grating.

All this seemed strange to Nekhludoff, and strangest of all was that he was obliged to thank and feel himself under obligation to the inspector and warden.

The warden led Nekhludoff from the men’s ward into the corridor, and through the open door opposite admitted him to the women’s meeting-room.

CHAPTER XL.