“Alexey, Father.”
“A sweet name. After Alexey, the man of God?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, and your grief in my prayers, and I will pray for your husband’s health. It is a sin for you to leave him. Your little one will see from heaven that you have forsaken his father, and will weep over you. Why do you trouble his happiness? He is living, for the soul lives forever, and though he is not in the house he is near you, unseen. How can he go into the house when you say that the house is hateful to you? To whom is he to go if he find you not together, his father and mother? He comes to you in dreams now, and you grieve. But then he will send you gentle dreams. Go to your husband, mother; go this very day.”
“I will go, Father, at your word. I will go. You’ve gone straight to my heart. My Nikita, my Nikita, you are waiting for me,” the woman began in a singsong voice; but the elder had already turned away to a very old woman, dressed like a dweller in the town, not like a pilgrim. Her eyes showed that she had come with an object, and in order to say something. She said she was the widow of a noncommissioned officer, and lived close by in the town. Her son Vasenka was in the commissariat service, and had gone to Irkutsk in Siberia. He had written twice from there, but now a year had passed since he had written. She did inquire about him, but she did not know the proper place to inquire.