"Ilya, get up please."
He opened his eyes and recognised Pavel Gratschev. Pavel was sitting on
a chair, kicking Ilya's legs gently. The bright sunlight streamed into
the room and shone on the samovar boiling on the table; Lunev blinked,
dazzled.
"Listen, Ilya."
Pavel's voice was hoarse, as though after heavy drinking, his face was
yellow, his hair disordered. Lunev looked at him, then sprung up from
the floor and cried half aloud:
"What?"
"She's caught," said Pavel, and shook his head.
"What? Where is she?" asked Ilya, bending over him and catching him by
the shoulder. Gratschev swayed and said miserably:
"They've put her in prison, yesterday morning, they say; they brought
her to the prison."
"What for?" asked Ilya in a loud whisper. Masha waked up, shuddered at
the sight of Pavel, and stared at him terrified. From the door into the
shop Gavrik looked in, his lips compressed in disapproval.
"They say she's stolen six hundred roubles from a merchant, a pocket
book, bills, and so on."
Ilya laid a hand on his friend's shoulder, and then moved silently away.
"When they searched they found the money at her house," said Gratschev,
in a dull way. "The police inspector, she struck him in the face."
"Oh, of course," said Ilya with a harsh laugh. "If you've got to go to
prison, why not go in style!"
When Masha understood that all this did not concern her she smiled and
said softly: "If they'd take me to prison."
Pavel looked at her, then at Ilya.
"Don't you know her?" asked Ilya. "Masha, Perfishka's daughter, you
remember."
"Oh, yes," said Pavel slowly and indifferently, and turned away,
although Masha, who had recognised him, greeted him with a smile.
"Ilya," said Gratschev gloomily. "If she's done that for me? She spoke
of it."
"Oh, I don't know for whom, for you or for herself, it's all the same!
Her song is finished."
Lunev could not collect his thoughts. Weary for want of sleep,
unwashed, and dishevelled, he sat down at Masha's feet, and looked
first at her, then at Pavel, and felt overwhelmed.
"I knew," he said slowly, "the whole business could come to no good
end."
"She wouldn't listen to me," said Pavel, in a lifeless tone.
"That's it, of course!" cried Lunev ironically. "That's the whole
trouble, that she wouldn't listen to you! What could you say to her?"
"I loved her."
"What's the good of your love? in the devil's name! What can you get
with that? Apart from anything else you never got her enough to eat by
your work."
"That's true," said Pavel, sighing. Lunev was irritated, he felt that
all these lives, Pavel's, Masha's, stirred him to wrath, excited him,
and not knowing where to direct his feelings, he vented them on his
friend.
"Every one wants to be decent and happy, you too, but you say to her, I
love you, therefore live with me, and suffer want; do you think that's
the way to take it?"
"How should I then?" asked Pavel gently.
The question calmed Ilya a little, involuntarily he fell to thinking
of it. "It would be easier for me to kill her with my own hands," said
Pavel.