Finally she sat down and sobbed. The tears flowed from her dull eyes over her aged shrivelled cheeks, lingered in the hollows of her wrinkles, and dribbled down on the greasy collar of her old calico waist. Her tears spoke of bitterness, despair, and feeble, but stubborn resistance. Her age, her senile ailments, and the hopelessness of the situation, all seemed to point to death as the only way out. At the same time memories of the past intervened, memories of a life of power, prosperity and unrestrained freedom, and these reminiscences plunged their sting into her soul, dragging her down to earth. "To die!" passed through her mind, but the thought was instantly supplanted by a dogged desire to live. She recalled neither Yudushka nor her dying son. It was as if both had ceased to exist for her. She thought of no one, was indignant at no one, accused no one, even forgot whether she had any capital or no and whether it was sufficient to provide for her old age. A deadly anguish seized her entire being. Her tears had come from a deep source. Drop by drop they had been accumulating since the moment when she left Golovliovo and settled at Dubrovino. She was quite prepared for everything that awaited her. She had expected and foreseen everything, but somehow it had never come to her with such vividness that her fears would be realized. And now this very end had arrived, an end full of anguish and hopeless lonesomeness. All her life long she had been busy building up, she had worn herself to the bone for something, and now she felt as if she had wasted her life on a phantom. All her life the word "family" had never left her lips. In the name of "family" she had punished some and rewarded others. In the name of "family" she had subjected herself to privations, torments, she had crippled her whole life; and suddenly she discovered that "family" was exactly what she did not have. "Good Lord! Can it possibly be the same everywhere?" was the thought that kept revolving in her mind. She sat with her head resting on her hand and her face soaked with tears turned to the rising sun, as if to bid it, "Look!" She neither groaned nor cursed. She simply sobbed as if choked by her tears. At the same time the thought seared her soul, "There is no one! No one! No one!" But now her eyes were drained of tears. She washed her face and wandered without purpose into the dining-room. Here she was assailed by the girls with new complaints which seemed at this time particularly importunate. "What is going to come of it, grandma? Is it possible that we shall be left just so, without anything?" grumbled Anninka. "How silly uncle is," Lubinka chimed in.