stop his ears, but could not, and fell to his knees, unconsciously repeating 'Marie, Marie!' And then, finally, there came a cry, a new cry, at which Shatov gave a start and jumped up from his knees, the cry of an infant, weak, cracked. He crossed himself and rushed into the room. In Arina Prokhorovna's hands a small, red, wrinkled being was crying and waving its tiny arms and legs, a terribly helpless being, like a speck of dust at the mercy of the first puff of wind, yet crying and proclaiming itself, as if it, too, somehow had the fullest right to life... Marie was lying as if unconscious, but after a minute she opened her eyes and gave Shatov a strange, strange look: it was somehow quite a new look, precisely how he was as yet unable to understand, but he did not know or remember her ever having such a look before.
'A boy? A boy?' she asked Arina Prokhorovna in a pained voice.
'A little boy!' she shouted in reply, swaddling the baby.
For a moment, once she had swaddled him and before laying him across the bed between two pillows, she handed him to Shatov to hold. Marie, somehow on the sly and as if she were afraid of Arina Prokhorovna, nodded to him. He understood at once and brought the baby over to show her.
'How... pretty...' she whispered weakly, with a smile.
'Pah, what a look!' the triumphant Arina Prokhorovna laughed merrily, peeking into Shatov's face. 'Just see the face on him!'
'Be glad, Arina Prokhorovna... This is a great joy...' Shatov babbled with an idiotically blissful look, radiant after Marie's two words about the baby.
'What's this great joy of yours?' Arina Prokhorovna was amusing herself, while bustling about, tidying up, and working like a galley slave.
'The mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great mystery and an inexplicable one, Arina Prokhorovna, and what a pity you don't understand it!'
Shatov was muttering incoherently, dazedly, and rapturously. It was as if something were swaying in his head, and of itself, without his will, pouring from his soul.
'There were two, and suddenly there's a third human being, a new spirit, whole, finished, such as doesn't come from human hands; a new thought and a new love, it's even frightening ... And there's nothing higher in the world!'
'A nice lot of drivel! It's simply the further development of the organism, there's nothing to it, no mystery,' Arina Prokhorovna was guffawing sincerely and merrily. 'That way every fly is a mystery. But I tell you what: unnecessary people shouldn't be born. First reforge everything so that they're not unnecessary, and then give birth to them. Otherwise, you see, I've got to drag him to the orphanage tomorrow... Though that's as it should be.'
'Never will he go from me to the orphanage!' Shatov said firmly, staring at the floor.
'You're adopting him?'
'He is my son.'
'Of course, he's a Shatov, legally he's a Shatov, and there's no point presenting yourself as a benefactor of mankind. They just can't do without their phrases. Well, well, all right, only I tell you what, ladies and gentlemen,' she finally finished tidying up, 'it's time for me to go. I'll come again in the morning, and in the evening if need be, and now, since it's all gone off so very well, I must also run to the others, they've been waiting a long time. Shatov, you've got an old woman sitting somewhere; the old woman is fine, but you, dear husband, don't you leave her either; stay by her, just in case you can be useful; and I don't suppose Marya Ignatievna will chase you away... well, well, I'm just laughing...'
At the gate, where Shatov went to see her off, she added, to him alone:
'You've made me laugh for the rest of my life: I won't take any money from you; I'll laugh in my sleep. I've never seen anything funnier than you last night.'
She left thoroughly pleased. From Shatov's look and his talk, it became clear as day that the man 'was going to make a father of himself, and was a consummate dishrag.' She ran over to her place, though it would have been closer to go directly to her next patient, on purpose to tell Virginsky about it.
'Marie, she said you should wait and not sleep for a while, though that, I see, is terribly difficult. . .' Shatov began timidly. 'I'll sit here by the window and keep watch on you, hm?'
And he sat down by the window behind the sofa so that there was no way she could see him. But before a minute had passed, she called him and squeamishly asked him to straighten her pillow. He began to straighten it. She was looking angrily at the wall.
'Not like that, oh, not like that... What hands!'
Shatov straightened it again.
'Bend down to me,' she suddenly said wildly, trying all she could not to look at him.
He gave a start, but bent down.
'More... not like that... closer,' and suddenly her left arm impetuously went around his neck, and he felt on his forehead her firm, moist kiss.
'Marie!'
Her lips were trembling, she tried to restrain herself, but suddenly she sat up and, flashing her eyes, said:
'Nikolai Stavrogin is a scoundrel!'
And strengthlessly, as if cut down, she fell with her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically and squeezing Shatov's hand tightly in her own.
From that moment on she no longer let him leave her, she demanded that he sit by her head. She could talk little, but kept looking at him with a blessed smile on her face. It was as if she had suddenly turned into some silly fool. Everything seemed transformed. Shatov now wept like a little boy, now said God knows what, wildly, dazedly, inspiredly; he kissed her hands; she listened with rapture, perhaps not even understanding, but tenderly touching his hair with a weakened hand, smoothing it, admiring it. He talked to her of Kirillov, of how they were now going to start living 'anew and forever,' of the existence of God, of everyone being good ... In rapture they again took the
