Then suddenly a terrible shriek--it could not be hers, she
could not scream like that--came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to
the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.

"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in the
first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or is
the baby born?"

Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears
choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began to cry,
sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves
tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out
of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and
seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into
his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen
her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of
the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face with
its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.

"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done
to me?"--said her charming, pathetic, dead face.

In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed
in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.

Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father's
room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to
the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise
round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went
up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss.
And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah,
what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew
felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin
he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The old man too
came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly crossed one
on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed to say:
"Ah, what have you done to me, and why?" And at the sight the old man
turned angrily away.

Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andreevich
was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin,
while the priest with