Tatiana Markovna’s servants had lost their heads in terror. Vassilissa and Yakob hardly stirred from the church. She intended, if her mistress recovered, to make her pilgrimage on foot to Kiev in order to venerate the miracle worker; he promised to the patron saint of the village a thick wax candle ornamented with gold. The rest of the servants hid themselves, and only looked shyly out after their mistress as she wandered distraught through the fields and the woods.
For two days already Tatiana Markovna had eaten nothing. Raisky indeed tried to restrain her from leaving the house again, but she waved him imperiously away. Then with decision he took a jug of water, came up to her, and took her hand. She looked at him as if she did not know who he was, then mechanically seized the jug in her trembling hand, and drank greedily in big mouthfuls.
“Grandmother, come home again, and do not make both yourself and us wretched,” he begged. “You will kill yourself.”
“It is God’s will; I shall not lose my reason, for I am upheld by His strength. I must endure to the end. Do you raise me if I fall. My sin!” she murmured and went on her way. After she had gone a few steps, she turned round and he ran to her.
“If I do not survive,” she began, signing to him to bow his head. Raisky knelt down, and she pressed his head to her breast, laid her hands on it and kissed him. “Accept my blessing, deliver it to Marfinka, and to her, to my poor Vera. Do you understand, to her also.”
“Grandmother!” he cried, kissing her hand.
She tore her hand away, and set out to wander once more through the thicket, by the river bank, and in the fields. A devout soul obeys its own laws, thought Raisky, as he dried his tears; only a saint could suffer like this for the object of her love.
Things were not going any better with Vera. Raisky made haste to tell her of his conversation with their aunt; when she sent for him early next morning, in her anxiety to have news of Tatiana Markovna, he pointed out of the window, and Vera saw how Tatiana Markovna was drifting, urged on by the heavy hand of misfortune. For a moment she caught sight of her expression, and sank horrified on the floor, but she pulled herself up again, ran from one window to the other, and stretched her hands out towards her grandmother. Then she rushed through the wide empty hall of the old house in a wild desire to follow Tatiana Markovna, but she realised in time that it would have killed her aunt if she approached her just now. Vera was conscious now how deeply she had wounded another life so close to her own, as she saw the tragic figure of her aunt, so happy until recently and now bearing the punishment of another’s sin. Raisky brought her Tatiana Markovna’s blessing, and Vera fell on his neck and wept for a long time.
On the evening of the second day, Vera was found sitting in a corner of the great hall, half dressed. Raisky and the priest’s wife, who had just arrived, led her almost by force into her room and laid her down on the bed. Raisky sent for the doctor, to whom he tried to explain her indisposition. The doctor prescribed a sedative, which Vera drank without being any calmer for it; she often waked in her sleep to ask after her grandmother.
“Give me something to drink ... don’t say a word. Do not let anyone come to see me. Find out what Grandmother is doing.” It was just the same in the night. When she awoke, she would whisper, “Grandmother doesn’t come, Grandmother doesn’t love me any more. She has not forgiven me.”