But there was no reply from the other side of the wall. The steady
muttering continued and also a sound of moving.

'He is prostrating himself to the ground, no doubt,' thought she.
'But he won't bow himself out of it. He is thinking of me just as I
am thinking of him. He is thinking of these feet of mine with the same
feeling that I have!' And she pulled off her wet stockings and put her
feet up on the bench, pressing them under her. She sat a while like that
with her arms round her knees and looking pensively before her. 'But it
is a desert, here in this silence. No one would ever know. . . .'

She rose, took her stockings over to the stove, and hung them on the
damper. It was a queer damper, and she turned it about, and then,
stepping lightly on her bare feet, returned to the bench and sat down
there again with her feet up.

There was complete silence on the other side of the partition. She
looked at the tiny watch that hung round her neck. It was two o'clock.
'Our party should return about three!' She had not more than an hour
before her. 'Well, am I to sit like this all alone? What nonsense! I
don't want to. I will call him at once.'

'Father Sergius, Father Sergius! Sergey Dmitrich! Prince Kasatsky!'

Beyond the partition all was silent.

'Listen! This is cruel. I would not call you if it were not necessary.
I am ill. I don't know what is the matter with me!' she exclaimed in a
tone of suffering. 'Oh! Oh!' she groaned, falling back on the bench. And
strange to say she really felt that her strength was failing, that