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 he understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something else⁠—something the living did not and could not understand⁠—and which wholly occupied his mind.

“There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together,” said he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natásha. “She looks after me all the time.”