and this pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all the
way and grew more and more alluring.

"About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by the
cemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stood
a stone windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived.
We passed the mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached the
gates of the cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:

"'I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God bless
you, but I am going back. I am not frightened.'

"'Well, what next!' I said, disconcerted. 'If you are going, you
had better go!'

"'I have been too hasty. . . . It was all about nothing that
mattered. You and your talk took me back to the past and put all
sort of ideas into my head. . . . I was sad and wanted to cry, and
my husband said rude things to me before that officer, and I could
not bear it. . . . And what's the good of my going to the town to
my mother's? Will that make me any happier? I must go back. . . .
But never mind . . . let us go on,' said Kisotchka, and she laughed.
'It makes no difference!'

"I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was an
inscription: 'The hour will come wherein all they that lie in the
grave will hear the voice of the Son of God.' I knew very well that
sooner of later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer in
the white tunic would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard;
I knew that an unhappy and insulted fellow-creature was walking