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.

The others firmly and silently shook each other's hands, which were as cold as ice and as hot as fire,--and silently, trying not to look at each other, they crowded together in an awkward, absent-minded group.

Now that they were together, they felt somewhat ashamed of what each of them had experienced when alone; and they were afraid to look, so as not to notice or to show that new, peculiar, somewhat shameful sensation that each of them felt or suspected the others of feeling.
But after a short silence they glanced at each other, smiled and immediately began to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before.

No change seemed to have occurred, and if it had occurred, it had come so gently over all of them that it could not be discerned in any one separately.
All spoke and moved about strangely: abruptly, by jolts, either too fast or too slowly.