The mother and Nikolay, walking up to the window, watched the girl pass through the yard and disappear beyond the gate. Nikolay whistled quietly, sat down at the table and began to write.

“She’ll occupy herself with this affair, and it’ll be easier for her,” the mother reflected.

“Yes, of course!” responded Nikolay, and turning around to the mother with a kind smile on his face, asked: “And how about you, Nilovna — did this cup of bitterness escape you? Did you never know the pangs for a beloved person?”

“Well!” exclaimed the mother with a wave of her hand. “What sort of a pang? The fear they had whether they won’t marry me off to this man or that man?”

“And you liked no one?”

She thought a little, and answered:

“I don’t recall, my dear! How can it be that I didn’t like anybody? I suppose there was somebody I was fond of, but I don’t remember.”

She looked at him, and concluded simply, with sad composure: “My husband beat me a lot; and everything that was before him was effaced from my soul.”

Nikolay turned back to the table; the mother walked out of the room for a minute. On her return Nikolay looked at her kindly and began to speak softly and lovingly. His reminiscences stroked her like a caress.

“And I, you see, was like Sashenka. I loved a girl: a marvelous being, a wonder, a — guiding star; she was gentle and bright for me. I met her about twenty years ago, and from that time on I loved her. And I love her now, too, to speak the truth. I love her all so — with my whole soul — gratefully — forever!”

Standing by his side the mother saw his eyes lighted from within by a clear, warm light. His hands folded over the back of the chair, and his head leaning on them, he looked into the distance; his whole body, lean and slender, but powerful, seemed to strive upward, like the stalk of a plant toward the sun.

“Why didn’t you marry? You should have!”

“Oh, she’s been married five years!”

“And before that — what was the matter? Didn’t she love you?”

He thought a while, and answered:

“Yes, apparently she loved me; I’m certain she did. But, you see, it was always this way: I was in prison, she was free; I was free, she was in prison or in exile. That’s very much like Sasha’s position, really. Finally they exiled her to Siberia for ten years. I wanted to follow her, but I was ashamed and she was ashamed, and I remained here. Then she met another man — a comrade of mine, a very good fellow, and they escaped together. Now they live abroad. Yes ——”

Nikolay took off his glasses, wiped them, held them up to the light and began to wipe them again.

“Ah, you, my dear!” the mother exclaimed lovingly, shaking her head. She was sorry for him; at the same time something compelled her to smile a warm, motherly smile. He changed his pose, took the pen in his hand, and said, punctuating the rhythm of his speed with waves of his hand:

“Family life always diminishes the energy of a revolutionist. Children must be maintained in security, and there’s the need to work a great deal for one’s bread. The revolutionist ought without cease to develop every iota of his energy; he must deepen and broaden it; but this demands time. He must always be at the head, because we — the workingmen — are called by the logic of history to destroy the old world, to create the new life; and if we stop, if we yield to exhaustion, or are attracted by the possibility of a little immediate conquest, it’s bad — it’s almost treachery to the cause. No revolutionist can adhere closely to an individual — walk through life side by side with another individual — without distorting his faith; and we must never forget that our aim is not little conquests, but only complete victory!”

His voice became firm, his face paled, and his eyes kindled with the force that characterized him. The bell sounded again. It was Liudmila. She wore an overcoat too light for the season, her cheeks were purple with the cold. Removing her torn overshoes, she said in a vexed voice:

“The date of the trial is appointed — in a week!”

“Really?” shouted Nikolay from the room.

The mother quickly walked up to him, not understanding whether fright or joy agitated her. Liudmila, keeping step with her, said, with irony in her low voice:

“Yes, really! The assistant prosecuting attorney, Shostak, just now brought the incriminating acts. In the court they say, quite openly, that the sentence has already been fixed. What does it mean? Do the authorities fear that the judges will deal too mercifully with the enemies of the government? Having so long and so assiduously kept corrupting their servants, is the government still unassured of their readiness to be scoundrels?”

Liudmila sat on the sofa, rubbing her lean cheeks with her palms; her dull eyes burned contemptuous scorn, and her voice filled with growing wrath.

“You waste your powder for nothing, Liudmila!” Nikolay tried to soothe her. “They don’t hear you.”

“Some day I’ll compel them to hear me!”

The black circles under her eyes trembled and threw an ominous shadow on her face. She bit her lips.

“You go against me — that’s your right; I’m your enemy. But in defending your power don’t corrupt people; don’t compel me to have instinctive contempt for them; don’t dare to poison my soul with your cynicism!”

Nikolay looked at her through his glasses, and screwing up his eyes, shook his head sadly. But she continued to speak as if those whom she detested stood before her. The mother listened with strained attention, understanding nothing, and instinctively repeating to herself one and the same words, “The trial — the trial will come off in a week!”

She could not picture to herself what it would be like; how the judges would behave toward Pavel. Her thoughts muddled her brain, covered her eyes with a gray mist, and plunged her into something sticky, viscid, chilling and paining her body. The feeling grew, entered her blood, took possession of her heart, and weighed it down heavily, poisoning in it all that was alive and bold.

Thus, in a cloud of perplexity and despondency under the load of painful expectations, she lived through one day, and a second day; but on the third day Sasha appeared and said to Nikolay:

“Everything is ready — to-day, in an hour!”

“Everything ready? So soon?” He was astonished.

“Why shouldn’t everything be ready? The only thing I had to do was to get a hiding place and clothes for Rybin. All the rest Godun took on himself. Rybin will have to go through only one ward of the city. Vyesovshchikov will meet him on the street, all disguised, of course. He’ll throw an overcoat over him, give him a hat, and show him the way. I’ll wait for him, change his clothes and lead him off.”

“Not bad! And who’s this Godun?”

“You’ve seen him! You gave talks to the locksmiths in his place.”

“Oh, I remember! A droll old man.”

“He’s a soldier who served his time — a roofer, a man of little education, but with an inexhaustible fund of hatred for every kind of violence and for all men of violence. A bit of a philosopher!”

The mother listened in silence to her, and something indistinct slowly dawned upon her.

“Godun wants to free his nephew — you remember him? You liked Yevchenko, a blacksmith, quite a dude.” Nikolay nodded his head. “Godun has arranged everything all right. But I’m beginning to doubt his success. The passages in the prison are used by all the inmates, and I think when the prisoners see the ladder many will want to run —” She closed her eyes and was silent for a while. The mother moved nearer to her. “They’ll hinder one another.”

They all three stood before the window, the mother behind Nikolay and Sasha. Their rapid conversation roused in her a still stronger sense of uneasiness and anxiety.

“I’m going there,” the mother said suddenly.

“Why?” asked Sasha.

“Don’t go, darling! Maybe you’ll get caught. You mustn’t!” Nikolay advised.

The mother looked at them and softly, but persistently, repeated: “No; I’m going! I’m going!”

They quickly exchanged glances, and Sasha, shrugging her shoulders, said:

“Of course — hope is tenacious!”

Turning to the mother she took her by the hand, leaned her head on her shoulder, and said in a new, simple voice, near to the heart of the mother:

“But I’ll tell you after all, mamma, you’re waiting in vain — he won’t try to escape!”

“My dear darling!” exclaimed the mother, pressing Sasha to her tremulously. “Take me; I won’t interfere with you; I don’t believe it is possible — to escape!”

“She’ll go,” said the girl simply to Nikolay.

“That’s your affair!” he answered, bowing his head.

“We mustn’t be together, mamma. You go to the garden in the lot. From there you can see the wall of the prison. But suppose they ask you what you are doing there?”

Rejoiced, the mother answered confidently:

“I’ll think of what to say.”

“Don’t forget that the overseers of the prison know you,” said Sasha; “and if they see you there ——”

“They won’t see me!” the mother laughed softly.

An hour later she was in the lot by the prison. A sharp wind blew about her, pulled her dress, and beat against the frozen earth, rocked the old fence of the garden past which the woman walked, and rattled against the low wall of the prison; it flung up somebody’s shouts from the court, scattered them in the air, and carried them up to the sky. There the clouds were racing quickly, little rifts opening in the blue height.

Behind the mother lay the city; in front the cemetery; to the right, about seventy feet from her, the prison. Near the cemetery a soldier was leading a horse by a rein, and another soldier tramped noisily alongside him, shouted, whistled, and laughed. There was no one else near the prison. On the impulse of the moment the mother walked straight up to them. As she came near she shouted:

“Soldiers! didn’t you see a goat anywhere around here?”

One of them answered:

“No.”

She walked slowly past them, toward the fence of the cemetery, looking slantwise to the right and the back. Suddenly she felt her feet tremble and grow heavy, as if frozen to the ground. From the corner of the prison a man came along, walking quickly, like a lamplighter. He was a stooping man, with a little ladder on his shoulder. The mother, blinking in fright, quickly glanced at the soldiers; they were stamping their feet on one spot, and the horse was running around them. She looked at the ladder — he had already placed it against the wall and was ............