paying no heed to her appearance.  This trait and a complete absence of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to Maslova.  Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased to know, that she was handsome, and yet the effect her appearance had on men was not at all pleasing to her; she was even afraid of it, and felt an absolute disgust to all love affairs.  Her men companions knew it, and if they felt attracted by her never permitted themselves to show it to her, but treated her as they would a man; but with strangers, who often molested her, the great physical strength on which she prided herself stood her in good stead.

“It happened once,” she said to Katusha, “that a man followed me in the street and would not leave me on any account.  At last I gave him such a shaking that he was frightened and ran away.”

She became a revolutionary, as she said, because she felt a dislike to the life of the well-to-do from childhood up, and loved the life of the common people, and she was always being scolded for spending her time in the servants’ hall, in the kitchen or the stables instead of the drawing-room.

“And I found it amusing to be with cooks and the coachmen, and dull with our gentlemen and ladies,” she said.  “Then when I came to understand things I saw that our life was altogether wrong; I had no mother and I did not care for my father, and so when I was nineteen I left home, and went with a girl friend to work as a factory hand.”

After she left the factory she lived in the country, then returned to town and lived in a lodging, where they had a secret printing press.  There she was arrested and sentenced to hard labour.  Mary Pavlovna said nothing about it herself, but Katusha heard from others that Mary Pavlovna was sentenced because, when the lodging was searched by the police and one of the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she pleaded guilty.

As soon as she had learned to know Mary Pavlovna, Katusha noticed that, whatever the conditions she found herself in, Mary Pavlovna never thought of herself, but was always anxious to serve, to help some one, in matters small or great.  One of her present companions, Novodvoroff, said of her that she devoted herself to philanthropic amusements.  And this was true.  The interest of her whole life lay in the search for opportunities of serving others.  This kind of amusement had become the habit, the business of her life.  And she did it all so naturally that those who knew her no longer valued but simply expected it of her.

When Maslova first came among them, Mary Pavlovna felt repulsed and disgusted.  Katusha noticed this, but she also noticed that, having made an effort to overcome these feelings, Mary Pavlovna became particularly tender and kind to her.  The tenderness and kindness of so uncommon a being touched Maslova so much that she gave her whole heart, and unconsciously accepting her views, could not help imitating her in everything.