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 Natásha.
He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.
“How are you, Márya? 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 Márya’s heart as the tone of his voice.
“And have you brought Nikolúshka?” he asked in the same slow, quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember.
“How are you now?” said Princess Márya, 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, chère amie, d’être venue. ”
Princess Márya 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