‘Besides,’ Larina asked herself, ‘who wants to meet someone who merely seeks comfort because they are afraid of their approaching death?’
She knew that apart from anything else she would feel shy to talk about the Fate which hung over her like the Sword of Damocles.
‘I will keep it to myself,’ she thought with sudden pride. ‘I will not whine and complain as women used to do to Papa.’
She could remember her father saying once,
“I am fed up with grizzling women!”
“What do you mean, ‘grizzling women’?” her mother had asked with a smile.
“The ones who have more aches and pains than anyone else! Needless to say they are always the richest! The poor are concerned with the fundamentals such as being born, keeping alive and having the bravery to die, as one man said to me, ‘with his boots on
