'Pray!'
'What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no good'—and she continued to smile.
'I want you to pray for me and lay your hands on me.
I saw you in a dream.'
'How did you see me?'
'I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.'
She took his hand and pressed it to her breast.
'Just here.'
He yielded his right hand to her.
'What is your name?' he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he was overcome and that his desire had already passed beyond control.
'Marie.
Why?'
She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist and pressed him to herself.
'What are you doing?' he said.
'Marie, you are a devil!'
'Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?'
And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.
At dawn he went out into the porch.
'Can this all have happened?
Her father will come and she will tell him everything.
She is a devil!
What am I to do?
Here is the axe with which I chopped off my finger.'
He snatched up the axe and moved back towards the cell.
The attendant came up.
'Do you want some wood chopped?
Let me have the axe.'
Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell.
She was lying there asleep.
He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond the partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put them on. Then he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long hair, and went out along the path down the hill to the river, where he had not been for more than three years.
A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon.
Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there.
Towards evening he approached a village, but without entering it went towards the cliff that overhung the river. There he again lay down to rest.
It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise.
All was damp and gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west.
'Yes, I must end it all.
There is no God.
But how am I to end it?
Throw myself into the river?
I can swim and should not drown.
Hang myself?
Yes, just throw this sash over a branch.'
This seemed so feasible and so easy that he felt horrified.
As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of prayer.
But there was no one to pray to.
There was no God.
He lay down resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep.
But that sleep lasted only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began not to dream but to remember.
He saw himself as a child in his mother's home in the country.
A carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeevich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Pashenka, a thin little girl with large mild eyes and a timid pathetic face.