Golovliovo was death itself, relentless, hollow-wombed death, constantly lying in wait for new victims. Two uncles had died there, two cousins had received mortal wounds. And Lubinka! Although Lubinka, to be sure, had died somewhere in Kretchetov because of her "own affairs," yet the origin of her wounds went back to her life at Golovliovo. All the deaths, all the poisonings, all the pestilence, came from there. There the orphans had been fed on rotten cured meats, there they heard the first words of hatred and contempt for human dignity. Not the slightest childish misdeed had passed without punishment. Nothing could be hidden from the stony-hearted, eccentric old woman, not an extra bite of bread, not a broken clay doll, not a torn rag, not a worn shoe. Each breach of law and order was instantly punished either with a reproach or a slap. And then, when they had been permitted to dispose of themselves, when they had understood that they might run away from the disgusting place, they ran--there! And nobody kept them from running away, nor could they have been kept from running away, because they could imagine nothing worse or more repulsive than Golovliovo. Ah, if all that could only be forgotten, if one could create a different existence in one's dreams, a magic world that would supplant both the past and the present! But alas, the reality Anninka had lived through had so powerful a hold, that the clutch of it suppressed the feeble efforts of her imagination. In vain did fancy endeavor to imagine angels with silvery wings. From behind those angels peeped inexorably the legions of Kukishevs, Lyulkins, Zabvennys, Popkovs. Lord! Was all lost? Even the ability to deceive and beguile herself? Had that been lost forever in the night revels, in wine, and in debauchery? Yet that past had to be killed somehow, so as not to poison her blood and rend her heart. It had to be crushed, utterly annihilated. How strange and ruthless was that which had happened! It was impossible even to conceive of some future, of some door by which to escape from the situation, of anything at all that might occur to change things. Nothing could occur. And what was even more unbearable was the fact that to all intents and purposes she was already dead, with the outward signs of life yet present. She should have ended it then, along with Lubinka. Somehow she had remained alive. How was it that the mass of shame which had come upon her then from all sides had not crushed her? And what an insignificant worm she must have been to have crept out from underneath that heap of heavy stones piled up on top of her!