"What a remarkable coincidence! That this case should be tried during
my term! That, without seeing her for ten years, I should meet her
here in the prisoner's dock! And what will be the end? Ah, I wish it
were over!"

He would not yield to the feeling of repentance which spoke within
him. He considered it an incident which would soon pass away without
disturbing his life. He felt himself in the position of a puppy who
had misbehaved in his master's rooms, and whom his master, taking him
by the neck, thrust into the dirt he had made. The puppy squeals,
pulls back in his effort to escape the consequences of his deed, which
he wishes to forget, but the inexorable master holds him fast. Thus
Nekhludoff felt the foulness of his act, and he also felt the powerful
hand of the master, but did not yet understand the significance of his
act, did not recognize the master. He did not wish to believe that
what he saw before him was the result of his own deed. But the
inexorable, invisible hand held him fast, and he had a foreboding that
he should not escape. He summoned up his courage, crossed his legs, as
was his wont, and, negligently playing with his pince-nez, he sat with
an air of self-confidence on the second chair of the front row.
Meanwhile he already felt in the depth of his soul all the cruelty,
dastardliness and baseness not only of that act of his, but of his
whole idle, dissolute, cruel and wayward life. And the terrible veil,
which during these twelve years in such marvelous manner had hidden
from him that crime and all his subsequent life, already began to
stir, and now and then he caught a glimpse behind it.