his fingers over the strings, evidently
uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.

"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last
begins to remember what happened before one was in the world..."

"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well, and
remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have lived
in animals, and will go back into animals again."

"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still in
a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we
were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
remember...."

"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down
by them.

"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. "No,
that can't be!"

"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was before?"
Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal--well then, if I
shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity."

"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked Dimmler,
who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now
spoke as quietly and seriously as they.

"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now today,
and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the
day before..."

"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"

"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same she
rose.

None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off
their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natasha
got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the
middle of the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best,
Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her and,
like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk
while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mitenka
stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take
his eyes off his sister and drew breath in ti