Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/100

 94 would pray and lay your hands on me. I saw you in a dream."

"How so?"

"I saw you put your hand on my chest."

She took his hand and pressed it to her breast.

"Here."

He yielded his right hand to her.

"What is your name?" he asked, his whole body shaking, and feeling that he was overcome and could not control his instinct.

"Marie. Why?"

She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist and pressed him.

"Marie, what are you doing?" he said. "You are a devil, Marie!"

"Oh, perhaps. Never mind."

And embracing him, she sat down at his side on the bed.

At dawn he went out of the door. Had all this really happened? Her father would come. She would tell. "She's a devil. But what have I done? Oh, there is the axe which I used to chop off my finger."

He took the axe and went back to the cell.

The attendant came towards him. "Do you want some wood cut? Give me the axe."