Upon Anninka the Passion Week evening service always made an overwhelming impression. As a child she had wept bitterly at the priest's words: "And when they plaited a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand," and in a tremulous treble she used to sing after the sexton: "Glory be to Thy long-suffering, oh, Lord! Glory be to Thee!" After the service she used to run, all a-quiver with emotion, to the maids' room, and there, in the growing twilight (Arina Petrovna allowed no candles in that room when there was no work being done), she related "The Passion of our Lord" to the servants. Silent tears flowed from the eyes of the slaves, and they heaved deep sighs. The poor servants felt their Master and Redeemer with their whole hearts and believed He would arise from the dead, arise from the dead in truth. Anninka, too, felt and believed. Beyond the gloom of their life of suffering and persecution, all these poor in spirit beheld the radiant kingdom of freedom. Even the old lady, usually so redoubtable, was gentle during Passion Week. She did not grumble or remind Anninka that she was an orphan. On the contrary, she fondled her and soothed her with kindly words. But Anninka was restless even in bed, she tossed about and talked to herself in her sleep. Then came her school years and wanderings, the first empty, the second painful. But even as a nomadic actress, Anninka had jealously observed the "holy days," calling back echoes of her distant past and moods of childlike devotion. But now when she saw her life clearly to its last detail, when she had cursed her life and when it became obvious that the future promised neither repentance nor forgiveness, when the source of devotion and the well-spring of tears had dried up, the effect of the tale of the Crucifixion upon her was truly overwhelming. In childhood a gloomy night had surrounded her, but beyond the darkness she had sensed the presence of light. Now nothing but interminable everlasting night stretched ahead endlessly. She neither sighed, nor was agitated, nor even thought. She merely sank into a state of profound torpor. Porfiry Vladimirych, too, from his very childhood, had revered the "holy days," but, true idol-worshipper that he was, he had observed merely the rites. Every year on the eve of Good Friday he had had the priest come and read the gospel, had sighed, lifted up his arms, touched the ground with his forehead, marked the number of chapters read by means of wax balls, but had understood nothing. Not until now, when his conscience was awakened, had he grasped the fact that the gospel contained the story of how Untruth visited a bloody judgment on Truth.