Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/80

 74 "Let me bind your wound."

"Go hence."

She dressed hurriedly and silently and sat in her furs, waiting.

The sound of little bells reached her from outside.

"Father Sergius, forgive me."

"Go. God will forgive you."

"Father Sergius, I will change my life. Do not forsake me."

"Go."

"Forgive—and bless me!"

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," she heard from behind the door. "Go."

She sobbed and went out from the cell.

The lawyer came forward to meet her.

"Well," he said, "I see I have lost. There's no help for it. Where will you sit?"

"I don't care."

She took a seat in the sledge and did not speak a word till they reached home.

A year later she entered a convent as a novice and led a life of severe discipline under the guidance of hermit R who wrote her letters at long intervals.