I could see, as we came up to her, that she was trembling with terror; she put up her hand to her white hair, clutched again desperately the two children, found at last her voice and hoped that we would be "indulgent." Molozov assured her that she would suffer in no kind of way, that we must use her school for a week or so and that any loss or damage that she incurred would of course be made up to her.

She was then, of a sudden, immensely fluent, explaining that her husband--"a most excellent husband to me in every way one might say"-- had been dead fifteen years now, that her two sons were both fighting for the Austrians, that she looked after the school assisted by her daughter.
These were her grandchildren....

Such a terrible year she, in all her long life, had never remembered.

She....
The arrival of the rest of the Oboz silenced her.

She remained, with wide-open staring eyes, her hand at her breast, watching, saying absent-mindedly to the children: "Now Katya....