me. I shall be back in a moment. I want to put a bandage round my
head. It aches so. Wait for me here." And the general's wife
went from the sitting-room to her bedroom.

"Rita!" she whispered to her faithful maid, who was hurriedly
sewing a mourning gown of crape for her. "Do not let the doctor go
till I return. Do you understand? Do what you please, but do not
let him go." The general's wife slipped from the bedroom into the
passage through a small side door, and disappeared.

The two rooms between hers and the chamber where the dead man lay
were quite empty and nearly dark; there were no candles in them.
From the chamber came the feeble glimmer of the tiny lamps burning
before the icons.* The tapers were not lit yet, as the deacon had
not yet arrived. He was to come at the same time as the priest and
the coffin. For the moment there was no one near the dead man; in
the anteroom sat the Sister of Mercy.


* Sacred images.


"You wish to pray?" she asked the general's wife.

"Yes, I shall pray there, in his room."

She slipped past the dead body without looking at it, to the room
that had been the general's bedroom, and closed the door behind
her. She was afraid to lock it, and after all, was it necessary?
It would only take a moment. There it is, the box! She knows it