Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/55

Rh had withered away unkissed, and become covered with premature wrinkles. All her love, all her feeling, everything that is tender and passionate in a woman had, in her case, been converted into the one sentiment of maternal love. With ardour, with passion, with tears, she hovered over her boys, like a gull of the steppe. Her sons, her darling sons, were being taken from her,—taken from her in such a way that she might never see them again! Who knows? Perchance a Tatár would cut off their heads in the very first skirmish, and she would never know where their deserted bodies lay, torn by the beasts of prey; and yet for each drop of their blood she would gladly give her whole self. Sobbing, she gazed into their eyes, even when all-powerful sleep began to close them, and said to herself: "Perhaps when Bulba wakes he will put off their departure for a brief day or two; perhaps he took it into his head to go so soon because he had been drinking hard."

The moon, from the height of heaven, had long since illuminated the whole courtyard filled with sleepers, the dense clump of willows, and the tall steppe grass which hid the wattled hedge. She still sat by the heads of her beloved sons, never removing her eyes from them for a moment, or even thinking of sleep. Already the horses, divining the approach of dawn, had ceased eating, and