THE FEELING of aloofness from all the world, that Natasha experienced at this time, she felt in an even more marked degree with the members of her own family. All her own family, her father and mother and Sonya, were so near her, so everyday and ordinary that every word they uttered, every feeling they expressed, was jarring in the world in which she had lived of late. She felt more than indifference, positive hostility to them. She heard Dunyasha's words of Pyotr Ilyitch, of a misfortune, but she did not understand them.

“What misfortune could they have, what misfortune is possible to them? Everything goes on in its old, regular, easy way with them,” Natasha was saying inwardly.

As she went into the drawing-room, her father came quickly out of the countess's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had evidently run out of the room to give vent to the sobs that were choking him. Seeing Natasha, he waved his arms in despair, and went off into violent, miserable sobs, that convulsed his soft, round face.

“Pet … Petya … Go, go in, she's calling …” And sobbing like a child, he tottered with feeble legs to a chair, and almost dropped on to it, hiding his face in his hands.

An electric shock seemed to run all through Natasha. Some fearful pain seemed to stab her to the heart. She felt a poignant anguish; it seemed to her that something was being rent within her, and she was dying. But with the pain she felt an instant release from the seal that shut her out of life. At the sight of her father, and the sound of a fearful, husky scream from her mother through the door, she instantly forgot herself and her own sorrow.

She ran up to her father, but he feebly motioned her towards her mother's door. Princess Marya, with a white face and quivering lower jaw, came out and took Natasha's hand, saying something to her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. With swift steps she went towards the door, stopped for an instant as though struggling with herself, and ran in to her mother.

The countess was lying down on a low chair in a strange awkward attitude; she was beating her head against the wall. Sonya and some maid-servants were holding her by the arms.

“Natasha, Natasha!…” the countess was screaming. “It's not true, not true … it's false … Natasha!” she screamed, pushing the maids away. “All you go away, it's not true! Killed!…ha, ha, ha!…not true!…”

Natasha knelt down on the low chair, bent over her mother, embraced he............