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Tanya Kovalchuk had often looked upon the ring as a symbol of doom, and she would ask Musya, now in jest, now in earnest, to remove the ring. "Make me a present of it," she had begged. "No, Tanechka, I will not give it to you. But perhaps you will soon have another ring upon your finger."
The most terrible sensation was when he was suddenly seized with an insufferable desire to cry out, without words, the desperate cry of a beast. He touched Werner quickly, and Werner, without lifting his eyes, said softly: "Never mind, Vasya. It will soon be over." And embracing them all with a motherly, anxious look, the fifth terrorist, Tanya Kovalchuk, was faint with alarm.
After the sentence the condemned were not placed together in one cell, as Tanya Kovalchuk had supposed they would be, but each was put in solitary confinement, and all the morning, until eleven o'clock, when his parents came, Sergey Golovin paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard, frowned pitiably and muttered inaudibly.
But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities. He feared death so little and thought of it so little that on the fatal morning, before leaving the house of Tanya Kovalchuk, he was the only one who had breakfasted properly, with an appetite. He drank two glasses of tea with milk, and a whole five-copeck roll of bread.
There where the lanterns are are those the gallows? What does it mean?" Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death. "We must bid each other good-by," said Tanya Kovalchuk. "Wait, they have yet to read the sentence," answered Werner. "Where is Yanson?" Yanson was lying on the snow, and about him people were busying themselves. There was a smell of ammonia in the air.
Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought together in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled an office, where people worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-room. They were now permitted to speak to one another. Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at once of the permission.
Golovin heaved a sigh, stretched himself, glanced again twice at the window, but the cold darkness of the night alone was there; then continuing to tug at his short beard, he began to examine with childish curiosity the judges, the soldiers with their muskets, and he smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk.
Just as Tanya Kovalchuk had thought all her life only of others and never of herself, so now she suffered and grieved painfully, but only for her comrades. She pictured death, only as awaiting them, as something tormenting only to Sergey Golovin, to Musya, to the others as for herself, it did not concern her.
And indeed, his face had turned slightly rosy, and no longer looked like that of a decomposing corpse. "The devil take them; they've hanged us," Golovin cursed quaintly. "That was to be expected," replied Werner calmly. "To-morrow the sentence will be pronounced in its final form and we shall all be placed together," said Tanya Kovalchuk consolingly. "Until the execution we shall all be together."
Take your places in pairs as you wish, but I ask you to hurry up." Werner pointed to Yanson, who was now standing, supported by two gendarmes. "I will go with him. And you, Seryozha, take Vasily. Go ahead." "Very well." "You and I go together, Musechka, shall we not?" asked Tanya Kovalchuk. "Come, let us kiss each other good-by." They kissed one another quickly.
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