these holders and
candlesticks, so fantastic. They were so peculiar in style that
it would seem as if they had been brought from the dream-world of
an excited fancy to the world of existence. There was no color,
no tinsel, no emblem of death, nothing in that sea of snowy
whiteness save an avalanche of snow-covered flowers and the
dazzling gleam of burning tapers, with the odor of
lilies-of-the-valley, roses, alder-blossoms, hyacinths, to which
was added incense of some kind, as peculiar as was everything in
that chamber. This incense, burning it was unknown in what place,
sent hither and thither through the air, from time to time, small
grayish cloudlets of smoke amid the gleam of the lights and
tinged by the gold of them. In that chamber were virginity, with
an atmosphere of mysticism, inventiveness unwilling to recognize
the impossible--a chapter of magic, a strophe of a poem, and in
it, as a central point for all else, was the slender form of Cara
on a lofty place, fallen asleep calmly, arrayed as in a bridal
robe, with her delicate face, which, in the pale, golden hair,
with a shade of whiteness barely discernible, emerged from the
flood of snowy crape and flowers. In that flood of snowy white,
in that gleaming brilliance of the tapers, in that richness of
intoxicating odors, in that atmosphere of haze moving from the
burning censer, Cara was sleeping calmly, with the smooth arches
of her dark brows below the Grecian outline of her forehead; on
her closed lips was a smile which was almost gladsome.

It must have been late at night when Kranitski rose from his
knees and found himself alone in that chamber. Outside the words
and prayers of watchers were heard murmuring beyond the doors and
the walls, but there the sleep of death seemed to reign alone.
After a while, however, something rustled near one of the walls.
Kranitski looked around and saw a man who seemed at first to be
an undefined patch on the snowy background. After a few seconds
he recognized Darvid's features in ruddy side-whiskers, but he
strained his eyes rather long inquiring whether he was not
mistaken. Neither sorrow nor despair, commonly roused by death in
the living, but something still greater and beyond that was
depicted in the look and the posture of Darvid. His eyes, usually
so clear, so positive, so like glittering steel, had in them now
an abyss of thought at the bottom of which terror was secreted,
while the form of the man seemed shrunk