arrant the mother, with unskilled
hand, traced on the paper in printed shining letters:

"Pelagueya Nilovna, widow of a workingman."

They went away, and the mother remained standing at the window. With
her hands folded over her breast, she gazed into vacancy without
winking, her eyebrows raised. Her lips were compressed, her jaws so
tightly set that her teeth began to pain her. The oil burned down in
the lamp, the light flared up for a moment, and then went out. She
blew on it, and remained in the dark. She felt no malice, she harbored
no sense of injury in her heart. A dark, cold cloud of melancholy
settled on her breast, and impeded the beating of her heart. Her mind
was a void. She stood at the window a long time; her feet and eyes
grew weary. She heard Marya stop at the window, and shout: "Are you
asleep, Pelagueya? You unfortunate, suffering woman, sleep! They
abuse everybody, the heretics!" At last she dropped into bed without
undressing, and quickly fell into a heavy sleep, as if she had plunged
into a deep abyss.

She dreamed she saw a yellow sandy mound beyond the marsh on the road
to the city. At the edge, which descended perpendicularly to the
ditch, from which sand was being taken, stood Pavel singing softly and
sonorously with the voice of Andrey:

"Rise up, awake, you workingmen!"

She walked past the mound along the road to the city, and putting her
hand to her forehead looked at her son. His figure was clearly and
sharply outlined against the sky. She could not make up her mind to go
up to him. She was ashamed because she was pregnant. And she held an
infant in her arms, besides. She walked farther on. Children were
playing ball in the field. There were many of them, and the ball was a
red one. The infant threw himself forward out of her arms toward them,
and began to cry aloud. She gave him the breast, and turned back. Now
soldiers were already at the mound, and they turned the bayonets
against her. She ran quickly to the church standing in the middle of
the field, the white, light church that seemed to be constructed out of
clouds, and was immeasurably high. A funeral was going on there. The
coffin was wide, black, and tightly covered with a lid. The priest and
deacon walked around in white canonicals and sang:

"Christ has arisen from the dead."

The deacon carried the incense, bowed to her, and smiled. His hair was
glaringly red, and his face jovial, like Samoylov's