“Why did you let it out?”
Nastasya began to weep, and, wiping her face with the edges of her calico headkerchief, said through her tears:
“It was my young mistress’s soul. Was it right to hold it?”
And it seemed to Father Ignatius that the happy little yellow canary, always singing with side-tilted head, was actually the soul of Vera, and if it had not flown away it wouldn’t have been possible to say that Vera had died. He became even more incensed at the maid-servant and shouted:
“Off with you!”
And because Nastasya did not vanish on the instant he added:
“Fool!”
II
From the day of the funeral, silence reigned in the little house. It was not stillness, for stillness is merely the absence of sounds; it was silence, because it seemed that they who were silent could speak but would not. So thought Father Ignatius each time he entered his wife’s chamber and met that obstinate gaze, so heavy in its aspect that it seemed to transform the very air into lead, which bore down one’s head and spine. So thought he, examining his daughter’s music-sheets, which bore marks of her voice-work, and also her books and her portrait, which she had brought with her from St. Petersburg. Father Ignatius never deviated from the following order when scrutinizing the portrait: First, he would gaze on the cheek upon which a strong light had been thrown by the painter; in his fancy he would see upon it a slight wound, which he had noticed on Vera’s cheek in death, and the source of which mystified him. More than once he meditated upon causes, and each time he reasoned that if it had been made by the train the entire skull would have been crushed, whereas the head of Vera remained wholly untouched.
It was possible that some one had done it with his foot when the body was being lifted, or accidentally with a finger-nail.