“Ah!... Perhaps ... perhaps _that_ was what she desired?” he thought, as the memory of her scorching kisses and flaming eyes and husky voice came back to him. “And I—I thought it but....” He shook himself, overwhelmed with anger and shame. He leaped out of bed, opened the window wide, and, seated on the sill, pondered till daybreak with profound sorrow over his involuntary offences and temptations. At Mass the next morning, he did not venture to raise his eyes; but he prayed all the more earnestly for Yagna, in whose great guilt he now believed entirely, although hatred and disgust for her were beyond his power. “What’s the matter?” the priest said to him in the sacristy after Mass. “You were sighing so hard, you almost put out the candles!” “My soutane makes me so hot!” he answered evasively, averting his face. “When you are accustomed to it, ’twill be as easy to wear as your own skin!” Yanek kissed his hand and went off to breakfast, picking out the shadows along the mill-pond, for the heat was broiling. On the way, he met Maryna pulling the priest’s blind old mare along by the mane, and singing a noisy song. His recollections of her stung him to the quick, and he went up to her in an angry mood. “What makes you rejoice so, Maryna?” And he gazed at her with shamefaced curiosity. “The hey-day in my blood!” she replied, showing her white teeth in a broad grin; and she went on pulling at the mare’s mane and singing still more noisily. “Merry! ... and after what she has done!” He turned away hastily from the girl—whose skirt was tucked up almost to her snowy knees—and went on to the Klembas’. There Agata lay in high state and in the centre of the dwelling-room, arrayed in her best holiday attire, wearing her cap, deeply frilled over the brows, many strings of beads round her neck, and a new striped skirt, and shoes laced with bright red laces. Her face seemed moulded in bleached wax, and full of a marvellous joy. Her cold stiffened fingers held the holy image, somewhat awry; two tapers burned at the bed’s head. Yagustynka was brushing the flies away with a bough. The smoke of juniper-berries was wafted through the room from the fire-place. Every now and then somebody came in to pray for her soul, and several children were playing about outside. Yanek, not without some qualms, looked into the dark room. “The Klembas have gone to town,” Yagustynka whispered. “As she has left them no small amount, they have to deck themselves out for her funeral. For is she not their kinswoman? Surely! But the body will be taken out only this evening; Matthew has not finished the coffin yet.”