"Yes, yes; you are very unhappy!" Marya Konstantinovna sighed,
hardly able to restrain herself from weeping. "And there's terrible
grief in store for you in the future! A solitary old age, ill-health;
and then you will have to answer at the dread judgment seat. . .
It's awful, awful. Now fate itself holds out to you a helping hand,
and you madly thrust it from you. Be married, make haste and be
married!"

"Yes, we must, we must," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna; "but it's
impossible!"

"Why?"

"It's impossible. Oh, if only you knew!"

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna had an impulse to tell her about Kirilin, and
how the evening before she had met handsome young Atchmianov at the
harbour, and how the mad, ridiculous idea had occurred to her of
cancelling her debt for three hundred; it had amused her very much,
and she returned home late in the evening feeling that she had sold
herself and was irrevocably lost. She did not know herself how it
had happened. And she longed to swear to Marya Konstantinovna that
she would certainly pay that debt, but sobs and shame prevented her
from speaking.

"I am going away," she said. "Ivan Andreitch may stay, but I am
going."

"Where?"