The infant turned its head and cried as a young woman bent over it, one hand pressing her breast as if she was restraining her breath, and touched its fair skin caressingly. The child’s tiny fist struck blindly at the air, and getting fairly awake he cried aloud. She drew back, pressing her hands to her face, sighing in her heart. The child blinked its blue eyes, and dozed off again.
The woman went into the other room, where a man was praying at the coffin.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! not this! Not this, Oh, God!”
She sat down, away from the man, her elbows on her spread knees, pressing her fingers into her cheeks, gazing at him, at the coffin, at the blurred mist of all this unreal reality.
The man moaned, “Oh, God! Oh, my God!”
She smiled bitterly, making a gesture partly of impatience, and with something of scorn.
“Have you no prayers—for the dead?”
“No.”
“Dead! Oh, my God, dead!”
“Hush, hush! Pray for the living.”