Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/227

Rh the doctor allowed it—they left the capital. . . . But imagine! On the very day of their departure they happened suddenly to meet a stretcher being carried along the street. . . . On the stretcher lay a man who had just been killed, with his head cut open; and imagine! the man was that fearful apparition of the night with the evil eyes. . . . He had been killed over some gambling dispute!

Then my friend went away into the country. . . became a mother for the first time. . . and lived several years with her husband. He never knew anything; indeed, what could she have told him?—she knew nothing herself.

But her former happiness had vanished. A gloom had come over their lives, and never again did that gloom pass out of it. . . . They had no other children, either before or after. . . and that son. . .'

My mother trembled all over and hid her face in her hands.

'But say now,' she went on with redoubled energy, 'was my friend to blame in any way? What had she to reproach herself with? She was punished, but had she not the right to declare before God Himself that the punishment that overtook her was unjust? Then why is it, that like a criminal, tortured by stings of conscience, why is it she is confronted with the