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 slow