And almost crying with sorrow--because of the eternal misunderstanding which all his life long had stood like a wall between him and those nearest to him, and which even now, in the last hour before death, peered at him stupidly and strangely through small, widely opened eyes--Vasily exclaimed: "Don't you understand that I am to be hanged soon?
Hanged! Do you understand it?
Hanged!" "You shouldn't have harmed anybody and nobody would--" cried the old woman.
"My God! What is this?
Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your son ?" He began to cry, and seated himself in a corner.

The old woman also burst out crying in her corner.

Powerless, even for an instant, to blend in a feeling of love and to offset by it the horror of impending death, they wept their cold tears of loneliness which did not warm their hearts.

The mother said: "You ask whether I am a mother to you?
You reproach me! And I have grown completely gray during these days.

I have become an old woman.