he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Márya, or to Natásha of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and shyly.
When Princess Márya had left Prince Andréy she fully understood what Natásha’s face had told her. She did not speak any more to Natásha of hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside his sofa, and did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the dying man was now so evident.
XVI
Not only did Prince Andréy know he would die, but he felt that he was dying and was already half dead.
He was conscious of an aloofness from everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness of existence.
Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming. That inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which he had felt continually all his life—was now near to him and, by the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and palpable. …
Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that terribly tormenting fear of death—the end—but now he no longer understood that fear.
He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the sky, and knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to himself after being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage of life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death