The hut, as usual on Sundays, was silent: the women busied with tidying the place, and the children out of doors, eating together at their porringer, and keeping Lapa off with spoons and cries. The sow grunted at the wall in the sunshine, the little ones nuzzling against her belly for milk; the stork was driving the hens off and running about after the colt that frisked in the court-yard. The orchard trees whispered, their branches waved; from the fields outside, the humming of bees on the wing resounded, and the lark’s song rang through the air. This Sunday quiet was so deep that only the quacking of ducks about the pond was heard, or the laughter of the lads as they washed themselves there. The roads lay deserted and bright in the sun, with very few wayfarers. Girls combed their locks on the door-step; and the notes of a shepherd’s pipe bubbled forth. Roch, as he said his rosary, heard all these sounds, but was mostly thinking of Yagna, whom he could hear bustling about within, sometimes coming close behind him, sometimes going out into the yard, and, as she returned, dropping her eyes before his, and flushing a deep red. He felt sorry for her. “Yagna!” he whispered kindly, raising his eyes. She stopped short with an intake of the breath, expecting he would say more. But he, as though doubtful of what he ought to say, only murmured a few inarticulate words and was silent. She went her way again and sat down at the open window, where, leaning on the sill, she looked out mournfully upon the sunny scene and on the white clouds, wandering like wild geese through the bright fields of heaven. A heavy sigh burst from her bosom, and tears dropped more than once from her reddened eyelids, rolling slowly down her cheeks, now somewhat worn and thin. For ah! how much she had gone through in those last days! The women turned their backs upon her when she passed, and some spat after her. Her friends looked another way; the youngsters laughed contemptuously, and the youngest of the Gulbas family had once flung mud at her, calling out: “The Voyt’s leman, you!” The words had stabbed her like a knife; and she felt suffocated with the shame of it. But, in God’s name, was she to blame in all this? He had made her drunk—so drunk that God’s world had vanished from her eyes!—And now they all accused her; the whole village fled from her as from one tainted, polluted: no one stood up in her defence.