The nun recognized her at once, and her eyebrows rose in surprise. Both her pure, pale, freshly washed face and the white headband she wore under the wimple seemed to be shining with joy.
“God has sent a miracle!” she cried, and she clapped her thin, pale hands.
Sophia Lvovna threw her arms fiercely around her, and then kissed her. She was afraid Olga would smell the wine she had drunk.
“We were just driving past when I remembered about you,” she said, breathing deeply, as though she had been hurrying. “Lord, how pale you are! I’m so glad to see you! Tell me how you are! Are you lonely here?”
Sophia Lvovna looked round at the other nuns and said softly: “There have been so many changes at home. You know I am married to Yagich—Vladimir Nikitich Yagich. I suppose you remember him.… I’m very happy!”
“Praise be,” Olga said. “And is your father well?”
“Yes, he’s well, thank you. He often asks about you. Olga, you must come and stay with us during the holidays.”
“Yes, of course,” Olga said, and she smiled. “I’ll come the second day of the holidays.”
Sophia Lvovna did not know why she began weeping. For a whole minute she wept silently, and then she dried her eyes and said: “Rita will be very sorry not to have seen you. She is here with us. Volodya’s here, too. They are near the gate. How pleased they would be if you would come out and see them! Shall we go? The service hasn’t begun yet.”
“Yes, let’s go,” Olga agreed.
She crossed herself three times and went out with Sophia Lvovna to the gate.
“Are you really happy? Are you, Sophia?” she asked as they came into the open.
“Very happy!”
“Praise be!”
Big Volodya and Little Volodya jumped out of the sleigh as soon as they saw the nun, and they greeted her respectfully. They were both visibly touched by her pallor and the dark nun’s costume, and they were both pleased because she remembered them and had come out to greet them. To prevent her from getting cold, Sophia wrapped her in a rug and covered her with a flap of fur coat. Sophia’s tears of a few moments ago had cleansed and relieved her spirits, and she was happy now that this noisy, restless, and in fact thoroughly impure night could have such a pure and clear-cut sequel. To keep Olga a little longer by her side, she said: “Let’s take her for a drive! Come in, Olga! We’ll just have a short drive.…”
The men expected the nun to refuse—holy people do not ride around in troikas—but to their surprise she agreed and got into the sleigh. And when the sleigh was hurrying in the direction of the town gate they were all silent, while trying to keep her warm and comfortable, and they were all thinking about her past and her present. Her face was passionless, almost expressionless, cold, pale, transparent, as though water, not blood, were flowing through her veins. Only two or three years ago she had been plump and red-cheeked, and she had talked all the time about her beaux and giggled over every mortal thing.
Near the town gate the sleigh turned back, and ten minutes later they stopped outside the nunnery gate and Olga got out. Now the church bells were ringing again.
“May God be with you,” Olga said, making a low bow as nuns always do.
“You’ll come and visit us, won’t you, Olga?”
“Yes, indeed!”
Then she left them and quickly disappeared through the dark gateway. Afterward the troika drove on again, and they were engulfed in a wave of melancholy. They were all silent. Sophia Lvovna felt as though her whole body had gone weak, and her spirits fell. It occurred to her that inviting a nun to sit in a sleigh and drive around with some drunken companions was stupid, tactless, and perhaps sacrilegious, and as her own drunkenness wore off, so she lost any desire to delude herself, and it became clear to her that she had no love for her husband and indeed could never love him, and it was all folly and stupidity. She had married him for his money, because, in the words of her school friends, he was madly rich, and because she was afraid of being an old maid like Rita, and because she was fed up with her father, the doctor, and because she wanted to annoy Little Volodya. If she could have known when she married her husband that her life would be hideous, dreadful, and burdensome, she would not have consented to the marriage for all the gold in the world. But the damage could never be undone, and she had to reconcile herself to it.
They went home. Lying in her warm soft bed and covering herself with her bedclothes, Sophia Lvovna remembered the dark doorway, the smell of incense, and the figures beside the columns, and she was terrified by the thought that these figures would remain motionless through the night, while she slept. The early service would go on forever, and would be followed by “the hours,” and then by the mass, and then by the thanksgiving service. …
“Oh, there is a God, yes, there truly is a God, and I must surely die, and that is why sooner or later I must think about my soul, about eternal life, and about Olga. Olga is saved now—she has found the answers to all the questions about herself.… But what if there is no God? Then her life has come to nothing. But how has it come to nothing? Why?”
A moment later another thought entered her head: “Yes, there is a God, and death will surely come, and I must think about my soul. If Olga saw death before her this very minute, she would not be afraid. She is ready. The important thing is that she has solved the problem of life for herself. There is a God … yes.… But is there any other way out, except by entering a nunnery? Entering a nunnery means renouncing life, reducing it to zero.…”
Sophia Lvovna began to feel a bit frightened. She hid her head under a pillow.
“I mustn’t think about it,” she muttered. “No, I mustn’t think about it.…”
Yagich was pacing the carpet in the adjoining room: there came the soft jingling sound of spurs as he surrendered to his contemplations. It occurred to Sophia Lvovna that this man was near and dear to her only because he bore the name of Vladimir: that was the only reason. She sat up in bed and called out tenderly: “Volodya!”
“What’s the matter?” her husband answered.
