For example, the four sides of the wood begin to run together quickly, to join and form a room,—the room at Hreptyoff. Basia is in it; she sees everything clearly. In the chimney a great fire is burning, and on the benches officers are sitting as usual: Pan Zagloba is chaffing Pan Snitko; Pan Motovidlo is sitting in silence looking into the flames, and when something hisses in the fire he says, in his drawling voice, “Oh, soul in purgatory, what needst thou?” Pan Mushalski and Pan Hromyka are playing dice with Michael. Basia comes up to them and says: “Michael, I will sit on the bench and nestle up to you a little, for I am not myself.” Michael puts his arm around her. “What is the matter, kitten? But maybe—” And he inclines to her ear and whispers something. But she answers, “Ai, how I am not myself!” What a bright and peaceful room that is, and how beloved is that Michael! But somehow Basia is not herself, so that she is alarmed.
Basia is not herself to such a degree that the fever has left her suddenly, for the weakness before death has overcome it. The visions disappear; presence of mind returns, and with it memory.
“I am fleeing before Azya,” said Basia to herself; “I am in the forest at night. I cannot go to Hreptyoff. I am dying.”
After the fever, cold seizes her quickly, and goes through her body to the bones. The legs bend under her, and she kneels at last on the snow before a tree.
Not the least cloud darkens her mind now. She is terribly sorry to lose life, but she knows perfectly that she is dying; and wishing to commend her soul to God, she begins to say, in a broken voice,—
“In the name of the Father and the Son—”
Suddenly certain strange, sharp, shrill, squeaking voices interrupt further prayer; they are disagreeable and piercing in the stillness of the night.
Basia opens her mouth. The question, “What is that?” is dying on her lips. For a moment she places her trembling fingers to her face, as if not wishing to lend belief, and from her mouth a sudden cry is wrested,—
“O Jesus, O Jesus! Those are the well-sweeps; that is Hreptyoff! O Jesus!”
Then that being who was dying a little before springs up, and panting, trembling, with eyes full of tears, and with swelling bosom runs through the forest, falls, rises again, repeating,—