"Well, what can be done? You have to submit, Pelagueya Nilovna."
As she searched and felt the mother's dress, the blood mounting to her face, she murmured:
"Oh, the dogs!"
"What are you jabbering about there?" the officer cried rudely, looking into the corner where she was making the search.
"It's about women's affairs, your Honor," mumbled Marya, terrorized.
On his order to sign the search warrant the mother, with unskilled hand, traced on the paper in printed shining letters:
"Pelagueya Nilovna, widow of a workingman."
They went away, and the mother remained standing at the window. With her hands folded over her breast, she gazed into vacancy without winking, her eyebrows raised. Her lips were compressed, her jaws so tightly set that her teeth began to pain her. The oil burned down in the lamp, the light flared up for a moment, and then went out. She blew on it, and remained in the dark. She felt no malice, she harbored no sense of injury in her heart. A dark, cold cloud of melancholy settled on her breast, and impeded the beating of her heart. Her mind was a void. She stood at the window a long time; her feet and eyes grew weary. She heard Marya stop at the window, and shout: "Are you asleep, Pelagueya? You unfortunate, suffering woman, sleep! They abuse everybody, the heretics!" At last she dropped into bed without undressing, and quickly fell into a heavy sleep, as if she had plunged into a deep abyss.
She dreamed she saw a yellow sandy mound beyond the marsh on the road to the city. At the edge, which descended perpendicularly to the ditch, from which sand was being taken, stood Pavel singing softly and sonorously with the voice of Andrey:
"Rise up, awake, you workingmen!"