really felt that her strength was failing, that
she was becoming faint, that everything in her ached, and that she was
shivering with fever.

'Listen! Help me! I don't know what is the matter with me. Oh! Oh!' She
unfastened her dress, exposing her breast, and lifted her arms, bare to
the elbow. 'Oh! Oh!'

All this time he stood on the other side of the partition and prayed.
Having finished all the evening prayers, he now stood motionless, his
eyes looking at the end of his nose, and mentally repeated with all his
soul: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!'

But he had heard everything. He had heard how the silk rustled when she
took off her dress, how she stepped with bare feet on the floor, and had
heard how she rubbed her feet with her hand. He felt his own weakness,
and that he might be lost at any moment. That was why he prayed
unceasingly. He felt rather as the hero in the fairy-tale must have felt
when he had to go on and on without looking round. So Sergius heard and
felt that danger and destruction were there, hovering above and
around him, and that he could only save himself by not looking in that
direction for an instant. But suddenly the desire to look seized him. At
the same instant she said:

'This is inhuman. I may die....'

'Yes, I will go to her, but like the Saint who laid one hand on the
adulteress and thrust his other into the brazier. But there is no
brazier here.' He looked round. The lamp! He put his finger over the
flame and frowned, preparing himself to suffer. And for a rather long
time, as it seemed to him, there was no sensation, but suddenly--he
had not yet decided whether it was painful enough--he writhed all over,
jerked his hand away, and waved it in the air. 'No, I can't stand that!'

'For God's sake come to me! I am dying! Oh!'

'Well--shall I perish? No, not so!'

'I will come to you directly,' he said, and having opened his door, he
went without looking at her through the cell into the porch where he
used to chop wood. There he felt for the block and for an axe which
leant against the wall.

'Immediately!' he said, and taking up the axe with his right hand he
laid the forefinger of his left hand on the block, swung the axe, and
struck with it below the second joint. The finger flew off more lightly
than a stick of similar thickness, and bounding up, turned over on the
edge of the block and then fell to the floor.

He heard it fall before he felt any pain, bu