Day began to break. Steps were heard behind the door. Marioushka started, as though ready to fly. They took leave of one another, Tichon promising to save Ivanoushka.
“Poor little fool,” he said, trying to calm himself. “She does not know what she is saying. I dare say it’s pure imagination on her part.”
A night watch had been fixed for the Thursday of Passover week. From vague allusions Tichon had gathered that some great mystery was to be enacted that night.
“Will it not be the one Marioushka spoke of?” he asked himself with horror! He sought her everywhere, but she had disappeared, maybe she had been purposely hid. The torpor of a nightmare held him. He dared not think of what was going to happen, but for Marioushka’s sake he would at once have fled.
On Thursday, about midnight, as usual they went to the night-service.
On entering the room, Tichon scanned carefully the faces of those present, and it seemed to him that the same torpor of some awful nightmare held everybody. They seemed to act against their own will.
The Queen was absent.
In came the King. His face, deadly pale, of extraordinary beauty, reminded Tichon of the image of the god Bacchus Dionysus, as he had seen it carved on stones and cameos, in the collection of antiquities belonging to James Bruce.
The night-watch service began. Never yet had the dance whirled so madly. It seemed white birds were flying in terror towards a white abyss.
To avoid rousing suspicion Tichon had also joined the dance, yet he forced himself not to surrender up to its intoxication. He often stopped and sat down on a bench, as if resting. He watched everybody, and thought about Ivanoushka.