Whenever people worried the princess, misunderstood her, or mortified her, and when she did not know what to say or do, she usually began to cry.  And on this occasion, too, she ended by hiding her face in her hands and crying aloud in a thin treble like a child.  The doctor suddenly stopped and looked at her.  His face darkened and grew stern.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he said in a hollow voice.  “I’ve given way to a malicious feeling and forgotten myself.  It was not right.”

And coughing in an embarrassed way, he walked away quickly, without remembering to put his hat on.

Stars were already twinkling in the sky.  The moon must have been rising on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, soft, and transparent.  Bats were flitting noiselessly along the white monastery wall.

The clock slowly struck three quarters, probably a quarter to nine.  The princess got up and walked slowly to the gate.  She felt wounded and was crying, and she felt that the trees and the stars and even the bats were pitying her, and that the clock struck musically only to express its sympathy with her.  She cried and thought how nice it would be to go into a monastery for the rest of her life.  On still summer evenings she would walk alone through the avenues, insulted, injured, misunderstood by people, and only God and the starry heavens would see the martyr’s tears.  The evening service was still going on in the church.  The princess stopped and listened to the singing; how beautiful the singing sounded in the still darkness!  How sweet to weep and suffer to the sound of that singing!

Going into her rooms, she looked at her tear-stained face in the glass and powdered it, then she sat down to supper.  The monks knew that she liked pickled sturgeon, little mushrooms, Malaga and plain honey-cakes that left a taste of cypress in the mouth, and every time she came they gave her all these dishes.  As she ate the mushrooms and drank the Malaga, the princess dreamed of how she would be finally ruined and deserted—­how all her stewards, bailiffs, clerks, and maid-servants for whom she had done so much, would be false to her, and begin to say rude things; how people all the world over would set upon her, speak ill of her, jeer at her.  She would renounce her title, would renounce society and luxury, and would go into a convent without one word of reproach to any one; she would pray for her enemies—­and then they would all understand her and come to beg her forgiveness, but by that time it would be too late. . . .

After supper she knelt down in the corner before the ikon and read two chapters of the Gospel.  Then her maid made her bed and she got into it.  Stretching herself under the white quilt, she heaved a sweet, deep sigh, as one sighs after crying, closed her eyes, and began to fall asleep.

In the morning she waked up and glanced at her watch.  It was half-past nine.  On the carpet near the bed was a bright, narrow streak of sunlight from a ray which came in at the window and dimly lighted up the room.  Flies were buzzing behind the black curtain at the window.  “It’s early,” thought the princess, and she closed her eyes.