She wanted to fall half-way between the wheels of the front truck, which was drawing level with her, but the little red handbag which she began to take off her arm delayed her, and then it was too late. The middle had passed her. She was obliged to wait for the next truck. A feeling seized her like that she had experienced when preparing to enter the water in bathing, and she crossed herself. The familiar gesture of making the sign of the cross called up a whole series of girlish and childhood memories, and suddenly the darkness, that obscured everything for her, broke, and life showed itself to her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes off the wheels of the approaching second truck, and at the very moment when the midway point between the two wheels drew level, she threw away her red bag, and drawing her head down between her shoulders, threw herself forward on her hands under the truck, and with a light movement as if preparing to rise again, immediately dropped to her knees. And at the same moment she was horror-struck by what she was doing. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Why?’ She wished to rise, to throw herself back, but something huge and relentless struck her on the head and dragged her down. ‘God, forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling…. A little peasant muttering something was working at the rails. The candle, by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, f lared up with a brighter light, lit up for her all that had before been dark, crackled, began to f licker, and went out for ever.