urst into sobs in his
presence. Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs
rose higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly
distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to make out his
features, and then she saw his face and met his gaze.

He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan, surrounded by
pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin, translucently white hand
he held a handkerchief, while with the other he stroked the delicate
mustache he had grown, moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them
as they entered.

On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace suddenly
slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She suddenly
felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of his face and
eyes.

"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold, stern look
replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living, while I..."

In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there
was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded his sister and
Natasha.

He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.

"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a voice
as calm and aloof as his look.

Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such horror
into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.

"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow, quiet
manner and with an obvious effort to remember.

"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she was
saying.

"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again making
an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips only (his
words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):

"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue." *

* "Thank you for coming, my dear."

Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She now
understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words, his
tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look could be
felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world, terrible
in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand
anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to understand, not
because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something
else--something th