"Rather than getting angry," I said to her, "you had better tell me your trouble. You might feel better afterward."
"I don't want anything; don't be afraid."
"I am not afraid; but you are disgusting to me." "Why am I disgusting?"
"Stop insisting or I will call the people." And so she struck out at every one--old and young, and women, too.
"I do not need you," I answered. "I need your pain, for I want to know why people suffer."
She looked at me sideways and answered, "Go to others. They are all in need, the devil take them." "Why curse them?"
"For whom are you making this pilgrimage?" I asked.
A smile spread over her face. She slackened her pace and she talked, though not to me:
"Last spring my husband went down the Dneiper to float lumber, and he never came back. Perhaps he was drowned, or perhaps he found another wife--who knows? My father-in-law and mother-in-law are very poor and very bad. I have two children-a boy and a girl--and how was I to feed them? I was ready to work--to break myself in two working--? but there was no work. And what can a woman earn? My father-in-law scolded. 'You and your children are a millstone around our necks, with your eating and drinking.' My mother-in-law nagged, 'You are young yet; go to the monastery; the monks desire women, and you can earn much money.' I could not stand the hunger of the children, and so I went. Should I have drowned them? I went."
She talked as in her sleep, through her teeth and indistinctly, and her eyes cried out with the pain of motherhood.
"My son is already in his fourth year; his name is Ossip and my daughter's name is Ganka. I beat them when they asked for bread; I beat them. I have wandered a whole month and I have earned four rubles. The monks are miserly. I would have earned more at honest labor. Oh, those devils! What waters can wash me now?"
I felt I ought to say something to her, so I said: "On account of your children, God will forgive you."
Here she cried out at me. "What is that to me? I'm not guilty before God! If He doesn't forgive me, He doesn't have to, and if He forgives me, I myself cannot forget it. It cannot be worse in hell. There the children will not be with me."
I excited her in vain, I said to myself. But already she could not restrain herself.