"Ah, how horrid!" he said to himself, looking up once more at the
half-naked woman, with the splendid marble shoulders and arms,
and the triumphant smile on her lips. "Oh, how horrid!" The bared
shoulders of the portrait reminded him of another, a young woman,
whom he had seen exposed in the same way a few days before. It
was Missy, who had devised an excuse for calling him into her
room just as she was ready to go to a ball, so that he should see
her in her ball dress. It was with disgust that he remembered her
fine shoulders and arms. "And that father of hers, with his
doubtful past and his cruelties, and the bel-esprit her mother,
with her doubtful reputation." All this disgusted him, and also
made him feel ashamed. "Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!"
"No, no," he thought; "freedom from all these false relations
with the Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and
from all the rest must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go
abroad, to Rome and work at my picture!" He remembered the doubts
he had about his talent for art. "Well, never mind; only just to
breathe freely. First Constantinople, then Rome. Only just to get
through with this jury business, and arrange with the advocate
first."
Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture
of a prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she
began to cry when the last words of the prisoners had been heard;
and he hurriedly put out his cigarette, pressing it into the
ash-pan, lit another, and began pacing up and down the room. One
after another the scenes he had lived through with her rose in
his mind. He recalled that last interview with her. He remembered
the white dress and blue sash, the early mass. "Why, I loved her,
really loved her with a good, pure love, that night; I loved her
even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the
first time and was writing my composition." And he remembered
himself as he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth
and fulness of life seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully
sad. The difference between what he had been then and what he was
now, was enormous--just as great, if not greater than the
difference between Katusha in church that night, and the
prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they
judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and
innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he
felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless,
frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating
himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He remembered
how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he
had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been
truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies: in the most
dreadful of lies--lies considered as the truth by all who
surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out
of these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged
himself in it.