Natasha is the first to leave the house. She has on a white dress and a
black cloak. Her black hair is covered with a thin black kerchief. Her
very deep dark eyes shine with flame-like brightness. She stands, her
pale face uplifted toward the moon. She awaits the other two.
Elena Kirillovna and Sofia Alexandrovna arrive together.
Elena Kirillovna leaves the house slightly earlier, but Sofia
Alexandrovna runs after her and overtakes her almost at the pond. They
wear black cloaks, black kerchiefs on their heads, and black shoes.
Natasha begins:
“On the night before the execution he did not sleep. The moon, just as
clear as to-night’s, looked into the narrow window of his cell. On the
floor the moon sadly outlined a green rhomb, intersected lengthwise and
crosswise by narrow dark strokes. Boris walked up and down his cell,
and looked now at the moon, now at the green rhomb, and thought—I wish
I knew his thoughts that night.”
Her remark has a quite tranquil sound. It might have been about a
stranger.
Sofia Alexandrovna now and again wrings her hands, and as she begins to
speak her voice is agitated and heavy with grief:
“What can one think at such moments! The moon, long dead, looks in.
There are five steps from the door to the window, four steps across.
The mind springs feverishly from object to object. That the execution
is to take place on the morrow is the one thing you try not to think
of. Stubbornly you repel the thought. But it remains, it refuses to
depart, it throttles the soul with an oppressive, horrible nightmare.
The anguish is intense and enfeebling. But I do not wish my gaolers and
all these officials who are come to me to see my anguish. I will be
calm. And yet what anguish—if only, lifting up my pale face, I could
cry aloud to the pale moon!”
Elena Kirillovna whispers faintly:
“Terrible, Sonyushka.”
There are tears in her voice—simple, old-womanish, grandmotherly tears.