On a pillar of white marble he read:
"Earth's little flower is plucked and dies,
A new star shines in heaven's skies."
Lunev read the couplet over and felt something touching in it. Suddenly he felt as though he had been struck to the heart, he swayed and shut his eyes; but through his closed lids he still saw clearly the inscription that had terrified him. The shining, golden letters on the big, brown stone seemed to have been cut on his brain:
"Here lies the body of the merchant Gilde Vassily Gavrilovitsch Poluektov, the younger."
After a moment or two, terrified at his own fear, he opened his eyes quickly, and looked suspiciously round about him. No one was there, only far off a burial service was being conducted. Through the stillness rang a thin tenor voice singing:
"Let us pray."
A deep, rather unpleasant voice answered, "Have mercy," and the clinking of the censers was just audible.
Lunev stood with his back against a maple-tree, his head thrown back, staring at the grave of the man he had murdered. He had pushed his cap off his brow, and it was pressed against the tree by the back of his head. His eyebrows were dark, his upper lip twitched, showing his teeth; his hands were deep in his jacket pockets, and his feet braced against the ground.
Poluektov's monument represented a coffin, and carved on it an open book, and a skull and crossbones. Beside it in the same enclosure was another smaller stone with an inscription that beneath it rested Eupraxia Poluektov, twenty-two years old.
"The first wife," thought Lunev. The thought came from only a small part of his brain, that remained free from the straining labour of his memory. He was gripped by the recollections of Poluektov; the first meeting, the murder, the feeling of the old man's saliva on his hands. But while all this stirred to life in his memory, he felt no trouble, no remorse, he looked at the gravestone with hate and bitterness and deep ill-will; and under his breath, with hot anger in his heart, and a real conviction of the truth of his words, he addressed the merchant: