For Katerina was lying there white and motionless, with lips as blue as those of a corpse, and her eyes fixed and dim. Slowly she rose, took a step or two forward, and fell with a piercing cry before the ikon. A few incoherent words escaped her lips. Then she fainted. Distractedly Ordynov raised her, and carried her to his bed, where he seated himself, in bewilderment, beside her. In a moment or two she opened her eyes, raised herself a little, and looked around her. Then, seizing Ordynov’s hand, she drew him towards her, and tried to speak; but her voice only choked, and died away into sobbing, while hot tears fell upon Ordynov’s hand and scorched it.

“Oh, how dreadful, how dreadful this is!” she moaned in a voice of agony. “I think I must be going to die.”

Her parched tongue prevented her from saying more; she could only gaze despairingly at Ordynov, who was at a loss to understand her. As he bent over her and listened, at length he heard her say in a low, clear voice——

“Bewitched! . . . Yes, I have been bewitched! . . . I am lost!”

Ordynov straightened himself as he looked with stern astonishment at the young girl. A terrible thought had crossed his mind, and manifested itself in his face by a convulsive spasm.

“Yes—bewitched!” she continued. “That wicked man has cast a spell over me. Yes, it is he, it is he, who has ruined my life. I have sold him my soul. . . . Why did you recall to me the memory of my mother? Why did you come here to torment me? May God judge and pardon you!” Again she relapsed into tears.

“He keeps on saying,” she continued in a low, mysterious voice, “that when he is dead he will return and claim my sinful soul. I am his—he has taken my soul—he reads to me out of his books. See, there is one of his books. He says that I have committed a mortal sin. Look at the book for yourself.”

She tendered him a volume which he had not before remarked. Taking it mechanically, he opened its covers, and saw that it was a book which resembled the devotional works affected by the Raskolniki.⁷ Yet he could not fix his attention upon it; he only let it fall to the ground, and then, embracing Katerina, endeavoured to calm her.

“Come,” he said, “you have been frightened, but I am near you now, so you may return to rest without fear, my sister, my love, the light of my eyes!”

“Ah, you do not understand, you do not understand,” she replied as she twined her hands in Ordynov’s. “I am always like this—I am always afraid. At such times I generally seek refuge with him, and sometimes, to comfort me, he recites an incantation, or at other times takes this book—the largest one that he possesses—and reads to me out of it. It is all about gloomy, terrible things. Sometimes I do not so much as know what he is reading about, and cannot understand it, and my terror redoubles. It seems to me as though not he were speaking, but some evil being whom it would be vain to entreat for mercy, who could never be propitiated. Then I feel such a weight, such a weight, pressing upon my breast! Then I suffer more than ever!”