It was the eve of a holiday. The little image-lamps burned before the
ikons.
It was late and it was quiet. Volodya’s mother was not asleep. In the
mysterious dark of her bedroom she fell on her knees, she prayed and
she wept, sobbing out now and then like a child.
Her braids of hair trailed upon her white dress; her shoulders
trembled. She raised her hands to her breast in a praying posture, and
she looked with tearful eyes at the ikon. The image-lamp moved almost
imperceptibly on its chains with her passionate breathing. The shadows
rocked, they crowded in the corners, they stirred behind the reliquary,
and they murmured mysteriously. There was a hopeless yearning in their
murmurings and an incomprehensible sadness in their wavering movements.
At last she rose, looking pale, with strange, widely dilated eyes, and
she reeled slightly on her benumbed legs.
She went quietly to Volodya. The shadows surrounded her, they rustled
softly behind her back, they crept at her feet, and some of them, as
fine as the threads of a spider’s web, fell upon her shoulders and,
looking into her large eyes, murmured incomprehensibly.
She approached her son’s bed cautiously. His face was pale in the light
of the image-lamp. Strange, sharp shadows lay upon him. His breathing
was inaudible; he slept so tranquilly that his mother was frightened.
She stood there in the midst of the vague shadows, and she felt upon
her the breath of vague fears.