Next he thought that perhaps something seemed to him thus because he was weak, then he closed his eyes. But after a while he opened them again.
The sister of charity was sitting on the same spot, motionless as if sunk in prayer.
A wonderful feeling composed of fear and delight began to raise the hair on the head of the sick man. Something attracted his eyes with incomprehensible power to that figure. It seemed to him that he had seen it somewhere, but where and when he could not remember. An irresistible desire to see her face seized him, but the white head-dress concealed it. Kamionka, without knowing why, did not dare to speak or to move, or hardly to breathe. He felt only that the sensation of fear and delight was possessing him more and more powerfully, and he asked with astonishment, "What is this?"
Meanwhile there was perfect day. And what a marvellous morning that must be outside! Suddenly without any transition there came into the studio a light as powerful, bright, and joyous as if it were springtime and May.
Waves of golden glitter, rising like a flood, began to fill the room, to overflow it so mightily that the marbles were drowned and dissolved in that brightness; the walls were covered with it and then disappeared altogether. Kamionka found himself as it were in some bright space without boundary.
Then he noticed that the covering on the head of the sister began to lose its white stiffness, that it trembled at the edges, melted, dissolved like clear mist, and changed into light.
The sister turned her face slowly toward the sick man, and then the deserted sufferer saw in the bright aureole the well-known hundred times beloved features of his dead wife.
He sprang from the bed, and from his breast came a cry, in which all his years of sorrow, tears, suffering, and despair were united,—
"Zosia! Zosia!"
And seizing her, he drew her to him; she threw her arms around his neck.