As soon, however, as Walek emerged from the mist, she was seized afresh by a dread of his fists. Again she humbly begged him, although she knew that her tormentor would not set her free:
'Perhaps the baby is dead in there.'
He answered nothing, threw down the strap of the barrow from his shoulder, approached his wife, and, by a movement of the head, pointed to the stakes up to which they must dig that day. Then he seized the spade, and began to throw mud into his barrow, time after time. He worked without thinking, quickly,—as fast as he could breathe. When he had filled the barrow he pushed it forward, running at top speed, and said as he left:
'Push yours too, you lazy brute....'
She took this mild concession to the object of her love, this brutal goodness, this hardness and severity as if it had been a caress. For it would be possible to finish the work far sooner if they both wheeled the mud. Rapidly and impetuously she now imitated his movements, like a monkey, and shovelled up the mud four times more quickly, no longer drawing on her muscular peasant's strength, but on her nervous power. Her chest rattled, dazzling colours passed under her eyelids, she felt faint, and large burning tears fell from her eyes into that cold, evil-smelling filth,—tears of unheeded pain. Every time she struck the spade into the ground she looked to see if it was still far to the stakes; her barrow ready, she seized it, and ran at full tilt after the man.
The mists rose high; they drew past the rushes and stood over the tops of the alders in an unmoving wall. The trees loomed through them as patches of indefinite colour, astonishingly large, but imperfect forms, which ran across the deep gorge like monstrous, terrible apparitions.
Their heads fell forward; their hands executed a uniform movement; their bodies were bowed to the ground....
The wheels of the barrows clattered and whined. Waves of mist like milk when poured into water, swayed amid the darkening hills.
The evening star shone low in the sky, and tremblingly threw its feeble light across the darkness.