Anninka was so overjoyed at her liberation from the Golovliovo bondage, that she did not even stop to think of the man who at her departure lost all contact with the world of living beings. She thought only of herself. She enjoyed the feeling of escape. And the sensation of freedom was so strong that when she visited the grave at Voplino again there was no longer a trace of that nervous sensibility which she had betrayed the first time. She listened to the requiem quietly, bowed before the grave without shedding a tear, and quite willingly accepted the priest's invitation to have tea with him. The house of the Voplino priest was very scantily furnished. The only room of state in the house, which served as the reception room, looked naked and dreary. Along the walls were arranged about a dozen painted chairs, upholstered with haircloth, in holes here and there, and a sofa of the same kind with its back bulging out, like the chest of an old-time general. Against one of the walls between two windows stood a plain table covered with a soiled cloth, on which lay several confession books of the parish. From behind them peeped an inkpot with a quill stuck in it. An image case containing an ikon handed down as a family heirloom and a burning ikon lamp were suspended in the eastern corner of the room. Underneath the image case stood two trunks covered with a drab faded cloth holding the family linen, the dowry of the lady of the house. The walls were not papered. A few daguerreotype portraits of bishops hung in the center of one wall. There was a peculiar odor in the room, as if many generations of flies and black beetles had met their fate there. The priest himself, though a young man, had become considerably faded amidst these surroundings. His thin flaxen hair hung from his head in long, straight locks, like the boughs of a weeping willow. His eyes, once blue, were now lifeless. His voice trembled, his beard had taken on a wedge-like shape, his merino cassock hung on him loosely. His wife, also young, looked even more faded than her husband, because of frequent child bearing. Nevertheless, Anninka could not help noticing that even these poor timid, worn-out people looked upon her not as at a real parishioner, but in pity, as if she were a lost sheep. "You were visiting at your uncle's?" began the priest, carefully removing a cup of tea from the tray held by his wife. "Yes, I stayed there about a week." "Porfiry Vladimirych is now the chief landowner in the district, and has the greatest power. But it looks as if luck is not with him. First one son died, then the other, and now his mother has departed. I am surprised he did not insist on your staying with him." "Uncle wanted me to stay, but I did not care to." "Why so?" "I prefer to live in freedom."