Pani Emilia, attended by her husband's brother, and having Marynia at her side, walked also behind the caravan with dry and expressionless face. Her eyes saw only one detail, and her mind was occupied with that alone. It had happened that a lock of Litka's flaxen, immensely abundant hair was outside the coffin. Pani Emilia did not take her eyes from it the whole way, repeating again and again, "O God, O God! they have nailed down the child's hair!" In Pan Stanislav's sorrow, weariness, nervous disturbance, resulting from sleeplessness, became a feeling of such unendurable oppression that at moments he was seized by an invincible desire to turn back when he had gone halfway,--return home, throw himself on a sofa, not think of anything, not wish anything, not love any one, not feel anything. At the same time this revulsion of self-love astounded him, made him indignant at himself: he knew that he would not return; that he would drain that cup to the bottom, that he would go to the end, not only because it would happen so, but because sorrow for Litka, and attachment to her, would be stronger than his selfishness. He felt, too, at that moment, that all his other feelings were contracted and withered, and that for the whole world he had in his heart merely nothing, at least, at that moment. For that matter his thoughts and feelings had fallen into perfect disorder, composed of external impressions received very hastily, observations made, it was unknown why, and mixed all together mechanically with a feeling of sorrow and pain. At times he looked at the houses past which the procession was moving, and he distinguished their colors. At times some shop sign caught his eye; this he read, not knowing why he did so. Then again he thought that the priests had ceased to sing, but would begin directly; and he was waiting for that renewed continuance of sad voices, as if in a kind of dread. At times he reasoned like a man who, waking from sleep, wishes to give himself an account of reality: "Those are houses," said he to himself; "those are signs; that is the odor of pitch from the torches; and there on the bier lies Litka; and we are going to the graveyard." And all at once there rose in him a wave of sorrow for that sweet, beloved child, for that dear face which had smiled so many times at him. He recalled her from remoter and from recent days; remembered her in Reichenhall, where he carried her when returning from Thumsee; and later at Bigiel's, in the country; and in Pani Emilia's house, when she said that she wanted to be a birch-tree; and finally, when, a few hours before her death, she entreated Marynia to marry him. Pan Stanislav did not say directly to himself that Litka loved him as a grown woman loves, and that, in betrothing him to Marynia, she had performed an act of sacrifice, for the feelings of the little girl were not known, and could not be defined with precision; he felt perfectly, however, that there was something like that love in