Another time when she called Dunyásha her voice trembled, so she called again⁠—though she could hear Dunyásha coming⁠—called her in the deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened attentively to herself.

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal from within.

At the end of January Princess Márya left for Moscow, and the count insisted on Natásha’s going with her to consult the doctors.