Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that since her father’s illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed with him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened. Thoughts that had not entered her mind for years⁠—thoughts of a life free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and of family happiness⁠—floated continually in her imagination like temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now, after that . These were temptations of the devil and Princess Márya knew it. She knew that the sole weapon against him