But at last the train disappeared, and the end car with the guard and the lighted lamps disappeared into the green. Sophia Pietrovna turned sharply and not looking at Ilyin began to walk quickly back along the path. She had herself in control again. Red with shame, offended, not by Ilyin, no! but by the cowardice and shamelessness with which she, a good, respectable woman allowed a stranger to embrace her knees. She had only one thought now, to reach her bungalow and her family as quickly as possible. The barrister could hardly keep up with her. Turning from the path on to a little track, she glanced at him so quickly that she noticed only the sand on his knees, and she motioned with her hand at him to let her be. Running into the house Sophia Pietrovna stood for about five minutes motionless in her room, looking now at the window then at the writing table.... “You disgraceful woman,” she scolded herself; “disgraceful!” In spite of herself she recollected every detail, hiding nothing, how all these days she had been against Ilyin’s love-making, yet she was somehow drawn to meet him and explain; but besides this when he was lying at her feet she felt an extraordinary pleasure. She recalled everything, not sparing herself, and now, stifled with shame, she could have slapped her own face. “Poor Andrey,” she thought, trying, as she remembered her husband, to give her face the tenderest possible expression--“Varya, my poor darling child, does not know what a mother she has. Forgive me, my dears. I love you very much ... very much!...” And wishing to convince herself that she was still a good wife and mother, that corruption had not yet touched those “sanctities” of hers, of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sophia Pietrovna ran into the kitchen and scolded the cook for not having laid the table for Andrey Ilyitch. She tried to imagine her husband’s tired, hungry look, and pitying him aloud, she laid the table herself, a thing which she had never done before. Then she found her daughter Varya, lifted her up in her hands and kissed her passionately; the child seemed to her heavy and cold, but she would not own it to herself, and she began to tell her what a good, dear, splendid father she had.