osition,
understood and pitied her.

"I think it is wrong for rich people to kill bears and get the
peasants drunk. Why don't they make themselves useful? I only need
eighty rubles. Oh, if you don't wish to, it is all the same to me,"
she said, angrily, interpreting the grave expression on Nekhludoff's
face to her disadvantage.

"On the contrary, I am very thankful to you for the opportunity----"

When she understood that he consented her face turned a purple color
and she became silent.

"I will fetch it immediately," said Nekhludoff.

He went into the entrance hall where he found an eavesdropping friend.
Without taking notice of his comrade's jests, he took the money from
his hand-bag and brought it to her.

"Please don't be thanking me. It is I who ought to be thankful to
you."

It was pleasant to Nekhludoff to recall all that; it was pleasant to
recall how he came near quarreling with the army officer who attempted
to make a bad joke of it; how another comrade sided with him, which
drew them more closely together; how merry and successful was the
hunt, and how happy he felt that night returning to the railroad
station. A long file of sleighs moved noiselessly in pairs at a gentle
trot along the narrow fir-lined path of the forests, which were
covered with a heavy layer of snowflakes. Some one struck a red light
in the dark, and the pleasant aroma of a good cigarette was wafted
toward him. Osip, the sleigh-tender, ran from sleigh to sleigh,
knee-deep in snow, telling of the elks that were roaming in the deep
snow, nibbling the bark of aspen trees, and of the bears emitting
their warm breath through the airholes of their wild haunts.

Nekhludoff remembered all that, and above all the happy consciousness
of his own health, strength and freedom from care. His lungs,
straining his tight-fitting fur coat, inhaled the frosty air; the
trees, grazed by the shaft, sent showers of white flakes into his
face; his body was warm, his face ruddy; his soul was without a care
or blemish, or fear or desire. How happy he was! But now? My God! How
painful and unbearable it all was!

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Rising the next morning Nekhludoff recalled the events of the previous
day and was seized with fear.

But, notwithstanding this fear, he was even more determined than
before to carry out his plan already begun.

With this consciousness of the duty that lay upon him he drove to
Maslenikoff for permission to visit in