Shimilin followed her down the stairs to the hall below. The old woman in the kitchen who did the cooking was crying in a room beyond the kitchen, out of sight. Katerin felt impelled to call a farewell to the old woman, and to Wassili, but she refrained because she suspected that the two servants might protest to the soldiers and draw ill treatment and probably death. So she passed down the hall and out through the double doors into the courtyard. The place was full of soldiers, and her eyes lit at once upon a pile of fresh, brown earth near the wagon-shed. That, she knew, was her father’s grave. She walked straight to the mound, and stopping beside it, turned and faced the soldiers. The heavily clad men stood about with their rifles, looking like great beetles, their heads topped with big caps, their faces wrapped in fur or rags, their bodies rotund with many garments, and the breath from their nostrils making what might have been inverted white horns as the air they breathed out turned to steam and spurted out from their faces behind the straps over their noses. They were not in ranks, these men, but gathered in groups as if waiting for some one to tell them what they should do next. Captain Shimilin followed Katerin halfway across the yard, where he stopped to speak to a tall soldier in a long coat. The pair talked together quietly, looking at Katerin. Shimilin carried a towel which he had snatched up as he had passed out of the hall. He whipped the towel against his coat while he talked with the other soldier, and it was plain that the Cossack was in bad humor. Katerin glanced at the spade and the old pickax which had been cast aside from the mound of earth. She lifted her eyes to the upper windows of the house. Then she threw open her sable coat, revealing the dull crimson of her velvet gown and the white of her throat. Gray and white and crimson, she made a striking picture against the dull background of the old buildings. The morning breeze which whipped in gustily over the courtyard wall and rattled the dead vines along its top, lifted wisps of her hair about her ears. The cold tortured her, but she gave no indication of her suffering. She looked like a beautiful flower which had grown in a drab garden now infested by wild things which had broken in for destruction and hated all things beautiful. She let her hands fall to her sides. The cold was numbing her. “I am ready!” she called to Captain Shimilin. The Cossack moved to her, and held out the towel. “I shall cover your eyes so that you shall not see the rifles,” he said. “Please do not touch me,” she begged. “It is all I ask. Let them shoot!” The soldier who had been talking to Shimilin walked up to Katerin and peered into her face. His features were concealed by a strap of fur. Katerin knew by his manner that he must be an officer, though he wore no insignia. After a casual glance at him, she looked beyond him and fixed her gaze upon the house.