In the third act events have moved a stage further. Nikíta and Anisya are married, but further than ever from happiness! Nikíta has learnt of the crime; he regards his wife as a murderess, feels her hateful and repulsive, and, with his usual soft-hearted sensuousness, has turned for consolation to his wife's half-witted stepdaughter--Akoulina. Anisya has to bear all alone {79} the dreadful consciousness of her guilt; she has the bitterness of seeing Nikíta spend on another the money for which she, as she feels, sold her soul; Nikíta beats her, and her passion for him enslaves her so that she can make no real protest. She is surprised herself at her own weakness: "I haven't a grain of courage before him. I go about like a drowned hen." Anisya's only hope is to get rid of Akoulina by marriage, but the neighbours suspect something and hold aloof. Even Matrónya, always on her son's side, has turned against the unhappy daughter-in-law; the one person who pities her is old Akím, who warns his son that he is acting against God and on the road to ruin. Again Tolstoy reminds us of _Macbeth_; his peasant heroine has gained all she desired, but it is hollow and worthless, and she envies her victim in his very grave. In the fourth act we have the punishment of Nikíta. Akoulina is to be married, for the sake of her dowry only, but her confinement comes just before the wedding should take place, and, if the child's existence is once known, it will ruin all. Nikíta, as usual, wants to throw the burden on his wife, but Anisya refuses absolutely. Matrónya, callous as ever, urges her son to the murder of his infant; with tragic irony in her speech she declares that it is such a little thing, it can hardly be counted as human at all. Anisya too urges him on, not with callousness but with a more terrible hate. "Let him also be a murderer! Then he'll know how it feels.... I'll make him strangle his dirty brat! I've worried myself to death all alone with Peter's bones weighing on my soul. Let him feel it too." Nikíta, always weak, gives way, and commits the murder, but it sickens him to the very soul. In the fifth act we see the long-delayed punishment of Matrónya. To the end she remains callous; she cannot understand the moral sufferings of Anisya and her son, but she can be reached through her son's worldly ruin, and that is what occurs. Nikíta cannot endure the hideous consciousness of his guilt. "When I eat, it's there! When I drink, it's {80} there! When I sleep, it's there! I am so sick of it, so sick! ... Even drink takes no hold on me." He ponders suicide, but reflects that this would only be a new crime, and at length he nerves himself, before all the wedding guests, his old father helping and assisting him, to make full confession.