it beside her, you may be of use; Marya
Ignatyevna won't drive you away, I fancy.... There, there, I was only
laughing."

At the gate, to which Shatov accompanied her, she added to him alone.

"You've given me something to laugh at for the rest of my life; I shan't
charge you anything; I shall laugh at you in my sleep! I have never seen
anything funnier than you last night."

She went off very well satisfied. Shatov's appearance and conversation
made it as clear as daylight that this man "was going in for being a
father and was a ninny." She ran home on purpose to tell Virginsky about
it, though it was shorter and more direct to go to another patient.

"Marie, she told you not to go to sleep for a little time, though, I
see, it's very hard for you," Shatov began timidly. "I'll sit here by
the window and take care of you, shall I?"

And he sat down, by the window behind the sofa so that she could not see
him. But before a minute had passed she called him and fretfully asked
him to arrange the pillow. He began arranging it. She looked angrily at
the wall.

"That's not right, that's not right.... What hands!"

Shatov did it again.

"Stoop down to me," she said wildly, trying hard not to look at him.

He started but stooped down.

"More... not so... nearer," and suddenly her left arm was impulsively
thrown round his neck and he felt her warm moist kiss on his forehead.

"Marie!"

Her lips were quivering, she was struggling with herself, but suddenly
she raised herself and said with flashing eyes:

"Nikolay Stavrogin is a scoundrel!" And she fell back helplessly with
her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically, and tightly squeezing
Shatov's hand in hers.

From that moment she would not let him leave her; she insisted on his
sitting by her pillow. She could not talk much but she kept gazing at
him and smiling blissfully. She seemed suddenly to have become a silly
girl. Everything seemed transformed. Shatov cried like a boy, then
talked of God knows what, wildly, crazily, with inspiration, kissed
her hands; she listened entranced, perhaps not understanding him, but
caressingly ruffling his hair with her weak hand, smoothing it and
admiring it. He talked about Kirillov, of how they would now begin "a
new life" for good, of the existence of God, of the goodness of all men.
... She took out the child again to gaze at it rapturously.

"Marie," he cried, as he held the child in his arms, "all the old
madness, s