Therefore I was silent, and she, as if she had
not noticed me, continued to sit there immovable.
"Even if we croaked ... what then...?" Natasha began again, this time
quietly and reflectively, and still there was not one note of
complaint in her words. It was plain that this person, in the course
of her reflections on life, was regarding her own case, and had
arrived at the conviction that in order to preserve herself from the
mockeries of life, she was not in a position to do anything else but
simply "croak"--to use her own expression.
The clearness of this line of thought was inexpressibly sad and
painful to me, and I felt that if I kept silence any longer I was
really bound to weep... And it would have been shameful to have done
this before a woman, especially as she was not weeping herself. I
resolved to speak to her.
"Who was it that knocked you about?" I asked. For the moment I could
not think of anything more sensible or more delicate.
"Pashka did it all," she answered in a dull and level tone.
"And who is he?"
"My lover... He was a baker."
"Did he beat you often?"
"Whenever he was drunk he beat me.
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