Yes!  She had not been mistaken.  The white corner of a folded paper appeared clearly against the general’s dark uniform.  At the same moment a cold draught coming from somewhere set the tapers flickering.  Shadows danced around the room, over the bier, across the dead man’s face; and in the quick change of light and shadow it seemed to her that the rigid features became more living, that a mournful smile formed itself on the closed lips, that the tightly-shut eyelids quivered.  A wild cry rang through the whole room.  With a desperate shriek:  “His eyes!  He is looking at me!” the general’s wife staggered forward and fell fainting to the floor, beside her husband’s bier.

V

The deacon sprang from his sofa with a cry, and an answering cry came from the lips of the shivering Rita, as she fled from the room.  Servants rushed in, rubbing their eyes, still half-asleep, questioning each other, running this way and that.  The deacon, spurred by a feeling of guilt, was determined to conceal the fact that he was sleeping.  “It was the lady!” he said.  “She came in to pray; she told me to stop reading while she prayed.  She knelt down.  Then she prayed for a long time, and suddenly ... suddenly she cried out, and fainted.  Grief, brothers!  It is terrible!  To lose such a husband!” and he set them to work with restoratives, himself rubbing the fallen woman’s chilly hands.

The general’s wife opened her eyes after a few minutes.

Looking wildly round in bewilderment, she seemed to be wondering where she was and how she had come there.  Suddenly she remembered.

“The will!  In his hands!  Take it!” she cried, and fainted again.  By this time the whole household was awake.  Anna Iurievna had come in, full of astonishment at the sudden disturbance, but with the same feeling of deep quiet and peace still filling her heart and giving her features an expression of joy and calm.  She heard the cry of the general’s wife, and the words were recorded in her mind, though she did not at first give them any meaning.

She set herself, with all the tenderness of a good woman, to minister to the other’s need, sending her own maid for sal volatile, chafing the fainting woman’s hands, and giving orders that a bed should be prepared for her in another room, further away from the bier.  As she spoke, quietly, gravely, with authority, the turmoil gradually subsided.  The frightened servants recovered themselves, and moved about with the orderly obedience they ordinarily showed; and the deacon, above all anxious to cover his negligence, began intoning the liturgy, lending an atmosphere of solemnity to the whole room.

The servants, returning to announce that the bedroom was ready, were ordered by Anna Iurievna to lift the fainting woman with all care and gentleness, and she herself went with them to see the general’s wife safely bestowed in her room, and waited while the doctor did all in his power to make her more comfortable.  Olga Vseslavovna did not at once recover consciousness.  She seemed to pass from a faint into an uneasy slumber, which, however, gradually became more quiet.