Chapter 26

Heonui went to bed in a frenzy and confusion, trying to comprehend her new thoughts and sensations. How could she, being in such grief, feel sympathy for another man? How could she appreciate someone's beauty with a woman's gaze, barely having buried her husband? How could she sigh with happiness — so new and pure — of someone who, for many weeks, tried to revive her from shock? Heonui was ashamed and unpleased; she was suffocating from her thoughts. Having fallen helplessly on the bed, the Princess fell asleep at that very moment, but what she dreamed of made her wake up in an icy sweat, with laboured breathing, crying out for help.

At first, it seemed to her that she did not seem to fall asleep, but then, she understood that the clothes she was wearing were different — some kind of dull floor-length shirt, made of blue cloth, with collars was not what Heonui Alexandrovna went down to reading the night before. Then, she put on a black skirt with an insulated embroidered apron, decorated with winter motifs like a snow whirlwind — a beautiful hand embroidered this outfit, one could tell, then, Heonui thought — and the same black velvet sleeveless jacket, also in contrast to the winter evening. Her Morocco boots in the same black colour reminded the hated hostess of the mood for the coming noble winter, and the black ribbon, encircling several rows of a thick braid, seemed to put an end to what the Princess wanted to tell the world about his hostility and indifference to her grief.

Immediately, the clothes were ridiculous and not to the body, and Heonui at once realized that she was not in reality. Nonetheless, embarrassment did not leave her thoughts because, quite often, her own mind deceived her.

She sat up in bed and listened. For a few minutes, only the wind blowing across the huge estate and the distantly heard voices of Wang Han and Chenghuan reached her, but then, suddenly — close, loud, as if in her very ear — a screech — angry and displeased, with such pain in its modulations — sounded, breaking the darkness. Heonui jumped up and trembled.

"Heonui!" the unintelligible sound took on a clear, immediately understandable form. Her name was heard from afar. She knew the call.

"Wang Tae!" trembling all over from both horror and cold, answered Heonui.

"Heonui! It hurts!" spoke the voice to her, and immediately, he appeared in the room.

 Translucent, as if floating in waves around the room and not knowing how to take on his former appearance, Wang Tae appeared before her, but as soon as she could distinguish him clearly, genuine horror seized her so that she couldn't even scream.

The beautiful face of her late husband — a face that any young lady admired — was now as if gnawed to the bone. The neck and the part of his hitherto powerful chest that opened up to the view were decomposing, and from his long, deliciously pale arms, only bones remained now.

Heonui cried.

"I am in pain!" he repeated, dropping to almost a whisper.

Suddenly, Heonui felt like a rush of some indescribable anger. A new, fresh anger like a waterfall poured over her wounded heart, and she blurted out to the ghost, approaching him in desperation:

"What are you doing to me? You're driving me insane, Wang Tae! If you need to kill me, then kill me already, but do not make me insane and unbearable to the world!"

And she pounced on the floating vision in rage and impotence.

Feeling a strong, piercing pain from the fall, Heonui opened her eyes and realized that ... she was in the arms of Wang Han, who was looking at her with a worried expression, pale and confused.