Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought
together in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled
an office, where people worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-room.
They were now permitted to speak to one another.

Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at once of the permission. The
others firmly and silently shook each other's hands, which were as
cold as ice and as hot as fire,-and silently, trying not to look at
each other, they crowded together in an awkward, absent-minded group.
Now that they were together, they felt somewhat ashamed of what each
of them had experienced when alone; and they were afraid to look, so
as not to notice or to show that new, peculiar, somewhat shameful
sensation that each of them felt or suspected the others of feeling.

But after a short silence they glanced at each other, smiled and
immediately began to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before. No
change seemed to have occurred, and if it had occurred, it had come so
gently over all of them that it could not be discerned in any one
separately. All spoke and moved about strangely: abruptly, by jolts,
either too fast or too slowly. Sometimes they seemed to choke with
their words and repeated them a number of times; sometimes they did
not finish a phrase they had started, or thought they had
finished-they did not notice it. They all blinked their eyes and
examined ordinary objects curiously, not recognizing them, like people
who had worn eye-glasses and had suddenly taken them off; and all of
them .frequently turned around abruptly, as though some one behind
them was calling them all the time and showing them something. But
they did not notice this, either. Musya's and Tanya Kovalchuk's cheeks