106
he did so a naked, smooth, stiff woman’s body answered to that touch and appeared to get warm under his grasp. He sometimes withdrew his hands sobbing, and then again placed them on the girl, and as now he was without a cap and ragged, so it seemed to him as unnatural that this naked body should be there beside him; he could not connect the idea of it with Tenaida.
And this was what had happened here!—What these men had done with this silent woman’s body. It now appeared to him in its whole disgusting ignominy, and with a strange sensation passing through all his limbs, he stretched himself so violently that his joints cracked, and he then fixed his absent look on her, and while his face became mournful, like that of a deeply reflecting man, his perplexity calmed down, although it still lay at the bottom of his soul.
