Again they lived in silence, distant and yet near to each other.

Once, in the middle of the week, on a holiday, as he was preparing to leave the house he said to his mother: "I expect some people here on Saturday." "What people ?" she asked.
"Some people from our village, and others from the city." "From the city ?" repeated the mother, shaking her head.

And suddenly she broke into sobs.
"Now, mother, why this ?" cried Pavel resentfully.

"What for ?" Drying her face with her apron, she answered quietly: "I don't know, but it is the way I feel." He paced up and down the room, then halting before her, said: "Are you afraid ?" "I am afraid," she acknowledged.

"Those people from the city--who knows them ?" He bent down to look in her face, and said in an offended tone, and, it seemed to her, angrily, like his father: "This fear is what is the ruin of us all.