after the break caused
by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she
could remember it and weep or pray.

After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Toward
midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began
to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to
rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.

Pictures of the near past--her father's illness and last moments--rose
one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered
over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the
picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in
imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures
presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they
seemed now present, now past, and now future.

She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was
being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,
muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray
eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.

"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died," she
thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she recalled in
all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the last stroke,
when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against his
will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going
to the door of the conservatory where he slept that night had listened
at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was saying something to
Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the Empress.
Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why didn't he call me? Why didn't
he let me be there instead of Tikhon?" Princess Mary had thought and
thought again now. "Now he will never tell anyone what he had in his
soul. Never will that moment return for him or for me when he might have
said all he longed to say, and not Tikhon but I might have heard and
understood him. Why didn't I enter the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he
would then have said to me what he said the day he died. While talking
to Tikhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was
standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and painful for him
to talk to Tikhon who did not understand him. I remember how he began
speaking to him about Lise as if she were alive--he had forgotten s