lying in the room he really was in, but that
he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded
all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and
tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would not be
in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers. He
was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the fear of death. It
stood behind the door. But just when he was clumsily creeping toward
the door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing
against it and forcing its way in. Something not human--death--was
breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the
door, making a final effort to hold it back--to lock it was no longer
possible--but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from
behind by that terror, opened and closed again.

Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain
and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was
death, and Prince Andrew died.

But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep,
and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.

"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!"
And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till
then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt
as if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that
strange lightness did not again leave him.

When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, Natasha went
up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer and looked at
her strangely, not understanding.

That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's
arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever
assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did not interest
Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more
convin