The cab stops, Lensky plunges out, the house door was open. An unpleasant smell of mire met him.
From the entrance, along the hall, he saw great drops of mud. He noticed it without thinking particularly of it. A feeling of painful discomfort grows in him with every step which he takes, and yet he could not have said what he feared.
He found no one to announce him, to tell him where his sister-in-law, where any one could be found. The whole household is in commotion. Uncertainly he stands still for a moment. Then he notices that these same large, black mud-drops which he has seen in the vestibule had soiled the linen stair-covering.
And suddenly he remembers how he had already seen such a train of muddy spots--in Moscow, on a hot summer night, when they carried a drowned person through the streets. He followed the drops, went up the stairs, still following them to one door; he knew in which room the door opened.
For one moment he hesitates, as if he could not face the horror which awaited him. Then he bursts open the door. The room is dimly lighted. A single candle flickers near the bed, from which the white curtains are remorselessly pushed back, and there on the bed lies something--he cannot exactly decide it. Trembling in her whole frame, Madame Jeliagin stands before it. Great, wet, black drops are on her dress, as if she had handled a mud-covered body.
"Mascha!" he groans, beside himself, seizing his sister-in-law by her thin arm and pushing her away from the bed.
Yes, there lies Mascha, waxy pale, with closed eyes and wet hair clinging to her cheeks.
"She is dead!" he gasps.
"No, no; she lives," assures Madame Jeliagin, but there is no joy in her voice, but uneasiness and discomfort.
Mascha opens her eyes, turns them away from her father, and shudders.