Many of the women in the crowd were moved to tears of ecstasy by the effect of the moment: some strove to kiss the hem of his garment, others cried out in singsong voices.
He blessed them all and talked with some of them. The “possessed” woman he knew already. She came from a village only six versts from the monastery, and had been brought to him before.
“But here is one from afar.” He pointed to a woman by no means old but very thin and wasted, with a face not merely sunburnt but almost blackened by exposure. She was kneeling and gazing with a fixed stare at the elder; there was something almost frenzied in her eyes.
“From afar off, Father, from afar off! From two hundred miles from here. From afar off, Father, from afar off!” the woman began in a singsong voice as though she were chanting a dirge, swaying her head from side to side with her cheek resting in her hand.
There is silent and long-suffering sorrow to be