Shall I?" said Mary Pavlovna.
"If you please," said Nekhludoff, and Mary Pavlovna went.
A strange feeling overcame Nekhludoff when he was alone in the little room with the sleeping Vera Doukhova, listening to her soft breathing, broken now and then by moans, and to the incessant dirt that came through the two doors that separated him from the criminals.
What Simonson had told him freed him from the self-imposed duty, which had seemed hard and strange to him in his weak moments, and yet now he felt something that was not merely unpleasant but painful.
He had a feeling that this offer of Simonson's destroyed the exceptional character of his sacrifice, and thereby lessened its value in his own and others' eyes; if so good a man who was not bound to her by any kind of tie wanted to join his fate to hers, then this sacrifice was not so great.
There may have also been an admixture of ordinary jealousy. He had got so used to her love that he did not like to admit that she loved another.
Then it also upset the plans he had formed of living near her while she was doing her term.
If she married Simonson his presence would be unnecessary, and he would have to form new plans.
Before he had time to analyse his feelings the loud din of the prisoners' voices came in with a rush (something special was going on among them to-day) as the door opened to let Katusha in.
She stepped briskly close up to him and said, "Mary Pavlovna has sent me."
"Yes, I must have a talk with you.
Sit down.
Valdemar Simonson has been speaking to me."
She sat down and folded her hands in her lap and seemed quite calm, but hardly had Nekhludoff uttered Simonson's name when she flushed crimson.
"What did he say?" she asked.
"He told me he wanted to marry you."
Her face suddenly puckered up with pain, but she said nothing and only cast down her eyes.
"He is asking for my consent or my advice.
I told him that it all depends entirely on you—that you must decide."
"Ah, what does it all mean?
Why?" she muttered, and looked in his eyes with that peculiar squint that always strangely affected Nekhludoff.
They sat silent for a few minutes looking into each other's eyes, and this look told much to both of them.
"You must decide," Nekhludoff repeated.
"What am I to decide? Everything has long been decided."
"No; you must decide whether you will accept Mr. Simonson's offer," said Nekhludoff.
"What sort of a wife can I be—I, a convict?
Why should I ruin Mr. Simonson, too?" she said, with a frown.
"Well, but if the sentence should be mitigated."
"Oh, leave me alone.
I have nothing more to say," she said, and rose to leave the room.
CHAPTER XVIII. NEVEROFF'S FATE.
When, following Katusha, Nekhludoff returned to the men's room, he found every one there in agitation.
Nabatoff, who went about all over the place, and who got to know everybody, and noticed everything, had just brought news which staggered them all.
The news was that he had discovered a note on a wall, written by the revolutionist Petlin, who had been sentenced to hard labour, and who, every one thought, had long since reached the Kara; and now it turned out that he had passed this way quite recently, the only political prisoner among criminal convicts.
"On the 17th of August," so ran the note, "I was sent off alone with the criminals.
Neveroff was with me, but hanged himself in the lunatic asylum in Kasan.
I am well and in good spirits and hope for the best."
All were discussing Petlin's position and the possible reasons of Neveroff's suicide.
Only Kryltzoff sat silent and preoccupied, his glistening eyes gazing fixedly in front of him.
"My husband told me that Neveroff had a vision while still in the Petropavlovski prison," said Rintzeva.
"Yes, he was a poet, a dreamer; this sort of people cannot stand solitary confinement," said Novodvoroff. "Now, I never gave my imagination vent when in solitary confinement, but arranged my days most systematically, and in this way always bore it very well."
"What is there unbearable about it?
Why, I used to be glad when they locked me up," said Nabatoff cheerfully, wishing to dispel the general depression. "A fellow's afraid of everything; of being arrested himself and entangling others, and of spoiling the whole business, and then he gets locked up, and all responsibility is at an end, and he can rest; he can just sit and smoke."
"You knew him well?" asked Mary Pavlovna, glancing anxiously at the altered, haggard expression of Kryltzoff's face.
"Neveroff a dreamer?" Kryltzoff suddenly began, panting for breath as if he had been shouting or singing for a long time. "Neveroff was a man 'such as the earth bears few of,' as our doorkeeper used to express it. Yes, he had a nature like crystal, you could see him right through; he could not lie, he could not dissemble; not simply thin skinned, but with all his nerves laid bare, as if he were flayed.
Yes, his was a complicated, rich nature, not such a— But where is the use of talking?" he added, with a vicious frown. "Shall we first educate the people and then change the forms of life, or first change the forms and then struggle, using peaceful propaganda or terrorism?
So we go on disputing while they kill; they do not dispute—they know their business; they don't care whether dozens, hundreds of men perish—and what men!
No; that the best should perish is just what they want.
Yes, Herzen said that when the Decembrists were withdrawn from circulation the average level of our society sank.
I should think so, indeed.