“‘Good heavens!’ I said to him, ‘you know you said yourself that she was certain to die, so what is the good of all these preparations of yours?’
“‘Even so, it is better to do all this,’ he replied, ‘so that I may have an easy conscience.’
“A pretty conscience, forsooth!
“After midday Bela began to suffer from thirst. We opened the windows, but it was hotter outside than in the room; we placed ice round the bed—all to no purpose. I knew that that intolerable thirst was a sign of the approaching end, and I told Pechorin so.
“‘Water, water!’ she said in a hoarse voice, raising herself up from the bed.
“Pechorin turned pale as a sheet, seized a glass, filled it, and gave it to her. I covered my eyes with my hands and began to say a prayer—I can’t remember what... Yes, my friend, many a time have I seen people die in hospitals or on the field of battle, but this was something altogether different! Still, this one thing grieves me, I must confess: she died without even once calling me to mind. Yet I loved her, I should think, like a father!... Well, God forgive her!... And, to tell the truth, what am I that she should have remembered me when she was dying?...
“As soon as she had drunk the water, she grew easier—but in about three minutes she breathed her last! We put a looking-glass to her lips—it was undimmed!
“I led Pechorin from the room, and we went on to the fortress rampart. For a long time we walked side by side, to and fro, speaking not a word and with our hands clasped behind our backs. His face expressed nothing out of the common—and that vexed me. Had I been in his place, I should have died of grief. At length he sat down on the ground in the shade and began to draw something in the sand with his stick. More for form’s sake than anything, you know, I tried to console him and began to talk. He raised his head and burst into a laugh! At that laugh a cold shudder ran through me... I went away to order a coffin.
“I confess it was partly to distract my thoughts that I busied myself in that way. I possessed a little piece of Circassian stuff, and I covered the coffin with it, and decked it with some Circassian silver lace which Grigori Aleksandrovich had bought for Bela herself.
“Early next morning we buried her behind the fortress, by the river, beside the spot where she had sat for the last time. Around her little grave white acacia shrubs and elder-trees have now grown up. I should have liked to erect a cross, but that would not have done, you know—after all, she was not a Christian.”