It is not to be wondered at, that, in her misery, she should turn anywhere for succour and sympathy; and both came to her at last in the guise of Major Glebof, an officer in the district, whose heart was touched by the sadness of her fate.  He sent her food and wine to restore her strength, and warm furs to protect her from the iciness of her cell.  In response to her letters of thanks, he visited her again and again, bringing sunshine into her darkened life with his presence, and soothing her with words of sympathy and encouragement, until gratitude to the “good Samaritan” grew into love for the man.

When she learned that the man who had so befriended her was himself poor, actually in money difficulties, she insisted on giving him every rouble she could wring, by any abject appeal, out of her friends and relatives.  She became his very slave, grovelling at his feet.  “Where thy heart is, dearest one,” she wrote to him, “there is mine also; where thy tongue is, there is my head; thy will is also mine.”  She loved him with a passion which broke down all barriers of modesty and prudence, reckless of the fact that he had a wife, as she had a husband.

When Major Glebof’s visits and letters grew more and more infrequent, she suffered tortures of anxiety and despair.  “My light, my soul, my joy,” she wrote in one distracted letter, “has the cruel hour of separation come already?  O, my light! how can I live apart from thee?  How can I endure existence?  Rather would I see my soul parted from my body.  God alone knows how dear thou art to me.  Why do I love thee so much, my adored one, that without thee life is so worthless?  Why art thou angry with me?  Why, my batioushka, dost thou not come to see me?  Have pity on me, O my lord, and come to see me to-morrow.  O, my world, my dearest and best, answer me; do not let me die of grief.”

Thus one distracted, incoherent letter followed another, heart-breaking in their grief, pitiful in their appeal.  “Come to me,” she cried; “without thee I shall die.  Why dost thou cause me such anguish?  Have I been guilty without knowing it?  Better far to have struck me, to have punished me in any way, for this fault I have innocently committed.”  And again:  “Why am I not dead?  Oh, that thou hadst buried me with thy own hands!  Forgive me, O my soul!  Do not let me die....  Send me but a crust of bread thou hast bitten with thy teeth, or the waistcoat thou hast often worn, that I may have something to bring thee near to me.”

What answers, if any, the Major vouchsafed to these pathetic letters we know not.  The probability is that they received no answer—­that the “good Samaritan” had either wearied of or grown alarmed at a passion which he could not return, and which was fraught with danger.  It was accident only that revealed to the world the story of this strange and tragic infatuation.