she was becoming faint, that everything in her ached, and that she was
shivering with fever.

'Listen! Help me! I don't know what is the matter with me. Oh! Oh!' She
unfastened her dress, exposing her breast, and lifted her arms, bare to
the elbow. 'Oh! Oh!'

All this time he stood on the other side of the partition and prayed.
Having finished all the evening prayers, he now stood motionless, his
eyes looking at the end of his nose, and mentally repeated with all his
soul: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!'

But he had heard everything. He had heard how the silk rustled when she
took off her dress, how she stepped with bare feet on the floor, and had
heard how she rubbed her feet with her hand. He felt his own weakness,
and that he might be lost at any moment. That was why he prayed
unceasingly. He felt rather as the hero in the fairy-tale must have felt
when he had to go on and on without looking round. So Sergius heard and
felt that danger and destruction were there, hovering above and
around him, and that he could only save himself by not looking in that
direction for an instant. But suddenly the desire to look seized him. At
the same instant she said:

'This is inhuman. I may die. . . .'

'Yes, I will go to her, but like the Saint who laid one hand on the
adulteress and thrust his other into the brazier. But there is no
brazier here.' He looked round. The lamp! He put his finger over the
flame and frowned, preparing himself to suffer. And for a rather long
time, as it seemed to him, there was no sensation, but suddenly--he