It was strange and absurd. Before him was the thought of death, while
here something small, empty and trivial arose, and his words cracked
like the shells of nuts under foot. And almost crying with
sorrow-because of the eternal misunderstanding which all his life long
had stood like a wall between him and those nearest to him, and which
even now, in the last hour before death, peered at him stupidly and
strangely through small, widely opened eyes-Vasily exclaimed:

"Don't you understand that I am to be hanged soon? Hanged! Do you
understand it? Hanged!"

"You shouldn't have harmed anybody and nobody would---" cried the old
woman.

"My God! What is this? Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your
son?"

He began to cry, and seated himself in a corner. The old woman also
burst out crying in her corner. Powerless, even for an instant, to
blend in a feeling of love and to offset by it the horror of impending
death, they wept their cold tears of loneliness which did not warm
their hearts. The mother said:

"You ask whether I am a mother to you? You reproach me! And I have
grown completely gray during these days. I have become an old woman.
And yet you say-you reproach me!"

"Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive me. It is time for you to go.
Kiss my brothers for me."