shall hardly marry. And if I do, there
will be no children--so that----"

"Dmitri, please stop it," said Natalia Ivanovna; but Nekhludoff saw
that she was glad to hear what he was saying.

The time for parting had come. The conductors were closing the doors,
inviting the passengers to take seats, others to leave the cars.

Nekhludoff entered the heated and ill-smelling car and immediately
appeared on its platform. Natalia Ivanovna was standing opposite, and
evidently wished to say something, but could not find words. She could
not say "_ecrivez_," because they had long been ridiculing the
customary phrase of parting friends. The conversation about financial
affairs and the inheritance at once destroyed the tender relations
they had resumed. They now felt themselves estranged from each other.
So that Natalia Ivanovna was glad when the train began to move and she
could say, with a smile: "Well, Dmitri, good-by!" As soon as the train
left she began to think how to tell her husband of her conversation
with her brother, and her face became grave and worried.

And though Nekhludoff entertained the best sentiments toward his
sister, and he concealed nothing from her, he now felt estranged from
her, and was glad to be rid of her. He felt that the Natasha of old
was no more; that there was only a slave of an unpleasant, dark, hairy
man with whom he had nothing in common. He plainly saw this, because
her face became illumined with peculiar animation only when he spoke
of that which interested her husband--of the distribution of the land
among the peasants, and of the inheritance. This made him sad.

CHAPTER XXV.

The heat in the large car of the third class, due to its exposure to
the scorching sun rays and the large crowd within, was so suffocating
that Nekhludoff remained on the platform. But there was no relief even
there, and he drew in long breaths when the train rolled out beyond
the houses and the movement of the train created a draught. "Yes,
killed," he repeated to himself. And to his imagination appeared with
unusual vividness the beautiful face of the second dead convict, with
a smile on his lips, the forbidding expression of his forehead, and
the small, strong ear under the shaved, bluish scalp. "And the worst
part of it is that he was killed, and no one knows who killed him. Yet
he was killed. He was forwarded, like the others, at the order of
Maslenikoff. Maslenikoff probably signed the usual order wi