“What has he said to you so special?” asked Rakitin irritably. “I can’t say, I don’t know. I don’t know what he said to me, it went straight to my heart; he has wrung my heart . . . He is the first, the only one who has pitied me, that’s what it is. Why did you not come before, you angel?” She fell on her knees before him as though in a sudden frenzy. “I’ve been waiting all my life for some one like you, I knew that some one like you would come and forgive me. I believed that, nasty as I am, some one would really love me, not only with a shameful love!”
