'Why am I thinking about her?' he asked himself, but he could not cease
doing so. 'Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy
as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But
why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to
myself.'

And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought, he
went on thinking about Pashenka.

So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now
of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At
last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him
and said: 'Go to Pashenka and learn from her what you have to do, what
your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.'

He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he felt
glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew
the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts (two hundred
miles) away, and he set out to walk there.



VI

Pashenka had already long ceased to be Pashenka and had become old,
withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of that failure,
the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in the country town
where he had had his last appointment, and there she was supporting the
family: her daughter, her ailing neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five