"What does it mean?" whispered the general's wife. "Why have they
opened all the doors?"

"I do not know ... they were all closed last night," murmured the maid
in reply, her teeth chattering with fear. She longed to ask her
mistress whither they were going, and what for? She wanted to stop,
and not enter the funeral chamber; but she was afraid to speak.

They passed quickly through the rooms; at the door of the last the
general's wife set her candle down on a chair, and halted for a
moment. The loud snoring of the reader startled them both.

"It is the deacon!" whispered the general's wife reassuringly. Rita
had hardly strength to nod assent. All the same, the healthy snoring
of a living man comforted her. Without moving from where she stood,
the maid tremblingly drew her woolen shawl closer about her, trying to
see the sofa on which the deacon lay.

Knitting her brows, and biting her lips till they were sore, Olga
Vseslavovna went forward determinedly to the bier. She thrust both
hands under the flowers on the pillow. The frill was untouched. The
satin of the cushion was there, but where was ...? Her heart, that had
been beating like a hammer, suddenly stopped and stood still. There
was not a trace of the will!

"Perhaps I have forgotten. Perhaps it was on the other side," thought
Olga Vseslavovna, and went round to the left side of the coffin.

No! It was not there, either! Where was it? Who could have taken it?
Suddenly her heart failed her utterly, and she clutched at the edge of
the coffin to keep herself from falling. It seemed to her that under
the stiff, pallid, rigidly clasped hands of the dead general something
gleamed white through the transparent muslin of the covering,
something like a piece of paper.

"Nonsense! Self-suggestion! It is impossible! Hallucination!" The
thought flashed through her tortured brain. She forced herself to be
calm, and to look again.

Yes! She had not been mistaken. The white corner of a folded paper
appeared clearly against the general's dark uniform. At the same
moment a cold draught coming from somewhere set the tapers flickering.
Shadows danced around the room, over the bier, across the dead man's
face; and in the quick change of light and shadow it seemed to her
that the rigid features became more living, that a mournful smile
formed itself on the closed lips, that the tightly-shut eyelids
quivered. A wild cry rang through the whole room. With a desperate
shriek: