We who are in the secret can aver that he did not even now know who Sophie Narishkin's mother was. But this Korynthia did not believe. She looked upon the whole scene as expressly got up to torture her--from the appearance of her husband at the very hour of the rendezvous, when he shed upon her love-lorn heart first the ice-drops of the funeral scene, then poured in the poison of the faithlessness of the man she adored. It was a deadly poison, killing inwardly and outwardly. When Ghedimin left her, Korynthia, clasping her two hands above her head, threw herself on the ground, sobbing bitterly. Then, as there was no one to raise her, she assumed a kneeling posture, her long plaits hanging like serpents over her bosom; and, lifting three fingers to heaven, she gasped out, with hideous vengeance: "Oh that I may repay you this some day!" Her lips parted; the gnashing of her clinched teeth was audible. She was meditating something; her eyes flashed fire; she rose, and bared her white, exquisitely formed arm to the shoulder. Then she pressed the rounded muscle of the upper part of her arm between her teeth, and bit into it until the blood flowed from it, and sucked the blood she had drawn. It is the Russian superstition that whoever would insure the fulfilment of his curse must, after uttering it, drink of his own blood. * * * * * The melancholy hum of the death's-head moth in the corner of the picture-frame sounded like the murmur of a lost soul. CHAPTER XXXIV A DIVIDED HEART Zeneida was celebrating three days of mourning in one. The first, Sophie's funeral; the second, Pushkin's marriage; the third, her own name-day. It had been Sophie's last wish that the wedding should precede her funeral. Her soul in its ascent to heaven would see and hear the bliss of the two she had loved so dearly on earth. According to Russian custom the lid was only screwed down on to the coffin just before it was lowered into the grave; with face uncovered the wanderer to the Hereafter is borne to his last resting-place. "Make the ceremony a short one!" Zeneida had said to the officiating priest. The Patriarch of Solowetshk, whose feet had sufficient Russian understanding to suffer from a severe attack of gout that day, had sent a priest in his stead. Let his inferior have his beard shaved off if things go amiss, and not him. For if a priest rashly marry a runaway couple the marriage is legal, but _the priest's beard is shaved off_, and he is forced to become a soldier. During the wedding ceremony, according to custom, two doves were set flying over the heads of the bridal pair. They fluttered for a time round the veranda, then let themselves down on to the catafalque, at the head of the dead girl, where the crucifix stood; there, the one on the right hand, the other on the left, above the head of the "martyr to love," they billed and cooed through the whole ceremony.