t of him? Was he like that incessant
moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her
imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When she saw an
indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees raised under the
quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body there, and stood
still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She
cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in the
middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man--Timokhin--was
lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others--the
doctor and a valet--lay on the floor.

The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by the
pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap.
The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you want? What's
the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what was lying in the
corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked, she must see him.
She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw
Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she
had always seen him.

He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck,
delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt,
gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never
seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible,
youthful movement dropped on her knees.

He smiled and held out his hand to her.

CHAPTER XXXII

Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his
temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked
to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into
the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he
had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
closed eyes. Then he o