"If you are sick, you must pray to God! Whenever I am not well, I always heal myself through prayer."
"I have come to you, uncle, to die."
Porfiry Vladimirych looked at her with questioning eyes, and an almost imperceptible smile stole over his lips.
"So that is where your acting has brought you?"
"Yes, that is where my acting has brought me. Lubinka is dead and I—I am alive,"
At the news of Lubinka's death Yudushka piously crossed himself and whispered a prayer. Anninka seated herself at table, her chin in her hands, looking toward the church and continuing to cry bitterly.
"See here, as for weeping and being in despair, it is surely a sin," remarked Porfiry Vladimirych sententiously. "And do you know what a Christian must do on such an occasion? Not cry, but submit and hope—that's how a Christian has to act."
But Anninka threw herself back on the chair and repeated, her arms drooping helplessly:
"Ah, I do not know, I do not know, I do not know!"
"If you are crying your eyes out on account of your sister," Yudushka continued to sermonize, "that is a sin, too. For although it is praiseworthy to love one's sisters and brothers, yet, if it be the will of God to take one or several of them to Himself——"