"Oh, I am doing excellently--so well, indeed, that I desire nothing
better," said Vera Efremovna, looking frightened, as usual, with her
kindly, round eyes at Nekhludoff, and turning her very thin, sinewy
neck, which projected from under the crumpled, dirty collar of her
waist.

Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison. She related her
case to him with great animation. Her discourse was interspersed with
foreign scientific terms about propaganda, disorganization, groups,
sections and sub-sections, which, she was perfectly certain, everybody
knew, but of which Nekhludoff had never even heard.

She was evidently sure that it was both interesting and pleasant to
him to know all that she was relating. Nekhludoff, however, looked at
her pitiful neck, her thin, tangled hair, and wondered why she was
telling him all that. He pitied her, but not as he pitied the peasant
Menshov with his hands and face white as potato sprouts, and
innocently languishing in an ill-smelling prison. He pitied her on
account of the evident confusion that reigned in her head. She seemed
to consider herself a heroine, and showed off before him. And this
made her particularly pitiful. This trait Nekhludoff noticed in other
people then in the room. His arrival attracted their attention, and he
felt that they changed their demeanor because of his presence. This
trait was also present in the young man in the rubber jacket, in the
woman in prison clothes, and even in the actions of the two lovers.
The only people who did not possess this trait were the consumptive
young man, the beautiful girl with sheep eyes, and the dark-featured
man who was talking to the beardless man who resembled a Skopetz.