interview with her.  He remembered the white dress and blue sash, the early mass.  “Why, I loved her, really loved her with a good, pure love, that night; I loved her even before:  yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the first time and was writing my composition.”  And he remembered himself as he had been then.  A breath of that freshness, youth and fulness of life seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully sad.  The difference between what he had been then and what he was now, was enormous—­just as great, if not greater than the difference between Katusha in church that night, and the prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they judged this morning.  Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did.  He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies:  in the most dreadful of lies—­lies considered as the truth by all who surrounded him.  And, as far as he could see, there was no way out of these lies.  He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged himself in it.

How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and her husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his children in the eyes?  How disentangle himself from Missy?  How choose between the two opposites—­the recognition that holding land was unjust and the heritage from his mother?  How atone for his sin against Katusha?  This last, at any rate, could not be left as it was.  He could not abandon a woman he had loved, and satisfy himself by paying money to an advocate to save her from hard labour in Siberia.  She had not even deserved hard labour.  Atone for a fault by paying money?  Had he not then, when he gave her the money, thought he was atoning for his fault?

And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught her up in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran away.  “Oh, that money!” he thought with the same horror and disgust he had then felt.  “Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,” he cried aloud as he had done then.  “Only a scoundrel, a knave, could do such a thing.  And I am that knave, that scoundrel!” He went on aloud:  “But is it possible?”—­he stopped and stood still—­“is it possible that I am really a scoundrel? . . .  Well, who but I?” he answered himself.  “And then, is this the only thing?” he went on, convicting himself.  “Was not my conduct towards Mary Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting?  And my position with regard to money?  To use riches considered by me unlawful on the plea that they are inherited from my mother?  And the whole of my idle, detestable life?  And my conduct towards Katusha to crown all?  Knave and scoundrel!  Let men judge me as they like, I can deceive them; but myself I cannot deceive.”