When Martha approached her daughter’s house, she saw a large crowd collected there. Some had entered the passage, others stood outside the windows. It had already got about that the well-known, rich Kornéy Vasílyef, who had been so much talked of in the district twenty years before, had died, a poor wanderer, in his daughter’s house. The house was full of people. The women whispered to one another, sighed and moaned.

When Martha entered, they made room for her to pass, and under the icons she saw the body⁠—already washed, laid out, and covered with a piece of linen. At its side Philip Kanónitch (who had had some education) was chanting the words of a psalm in Slavonic, in a voice like a deacon’s.

Neither to forgive nor to ask forgiveness was any longer possible; and from the stern, beautiful old face of Kornéy she could not tell whether he had forgiven her or not.