“My dear love, I will always love thee and him, be sure.”
Thereupon Marynia tried to raise his hand to her lips, but from weakness she was not able to do so; then she smiled at him from thankfulness. And again she said, “Do not think that I suppose for a moment anything terrible, not at all! but I should like to confess.”
A shiver went through Pan Stanislav from head to feet.
“Well, my child,” answered he, with a voice of fear, and as it were not his own voice.
And, recollecting that once her expression “service of God” pleased him, and wishing to let him know that it was not the question of anything else here but the performance of ordinary religious duties, she repeated, with an almost glad smile,—
“The service of God.”
The confession took place next morning. Pan Stanislav was so sure that that was the end that he was almost astonished because Marynia was alive yet, and because she was even a little better in the evening.
He did not dare to admit hope into his soul. But she became brighter, and said that she breathed more easily. About midnight she began the usual warfare with him about his going to rest. Indeed, from trouble of mind and toil he looked not much better than she did. He refused at first, contending that he had slept in the daytime, and that he was refreshed, which was not true; but she insisted absolutely. He yielded all the more that there was a special woman and Pani Bigiel, besides the doctor, who for a week had slept in their house, and who assured him now that for the time there was no reason to expect any turn for the worse.
But when he went out, he did as he did usually; that is, he sat in an armchair at the door, and began to listen to what was happening in the room. In this way the hours of night passed. At the least noise he sprang up; but when the noise ceased he sat down again and began to think hurriedly and chaotically, as people do over whom danger is hanging. But at times his thoughts pressed one another, grew confused from weariness, forming, as it were, a dense crowd in which he was wandering without power to know anything. Sleep also tortured him. He had uncommon strength; but for ten days he knew not how he lived. Only black coffee and feverishness kept him on his feet. He did not yield even then, though his head was as heavy as lead and the crowd of his thoughts changed, as it were, into a black cloud, without a clear spot. He merely repeated to himself yet that Marynia was sick and he ought not to fall asleep; but these words had not the least meaning for him now.
At last toil, exhaustion, and sleepless nights conquered. A stony invincible sleep seized him,—a sleep in which there was no dreaming, in which reality perished, in which the whole world perished, and in which life itself was benumbed.