but one response, “I am contented with everything thou dost.”
She smiled the same cold smile whatever Venik did or thought. Be it subtile questioning, be it doubting, be it the outpouring of affliction—for it all she had but one cold smile.
Then he took his violin into his hands again and turning towards Krista with it he said “A little while ago these strings breathed life, now only the icy wind of death streams from them. Oh! Krista a little while ago they charmed thee to my side, now they have murdered thee and driven thee away for ever.” And Krista ever smiled the same cold smile.
And she still smiled when they brought her coffin and when they laid her to rest in it on a bed of flowers. And when the singers came with whom in times gone by she had wrought her audience to a frenzy of delight, and when above her pealed the funeral dirge its last farewell she smiled the same cold smile. And she smiled when priests came and above her coffin pattered prayers which sounded already like the rattling of the clods of earth upon its lid. And still she smiled when the lid was laid upon the coffin, even when that lid had all but closed upon her, even when in one last lingering gleam the light of this world died away into eternal darkness. The lid concealed her face and concealed her smile. And Venik in spirit saw her still smile
