Of that long drive homeward across the city, Ivan's only memory was of a long blur of pain that culminated, as they halted at the portals, in a sudden burst of realization. His eyes, tear-shrouded as they were, sought the well-known window on the second floor from which his mother's face had so often greeted him or smiled down a farewell for one more week.—Yes, the window was alight! Then—then she was still—Great God! How did human senses bear such grief as was swelling through him now?
Within the gloomily lighted hall Ivan found himself, quite unexpectedly, face to face with his father, who was apparently awaiting him. Until this moment Ivan had forgotten the very existence of Prince Michael; but now he was startled at the drawn and haggard face that presented itself in the lamp-light, as his father seized him by the arm, and, whispering a few words of the explanation that brought Ivan's heart into his throat, drew him swiftly up-stairs, to the threshold of her room, and there turned, leaving him alone.
Five minutes before the priest, his last rites accomplished, had passed out of the doorway on which the boy now halted, straining his eyes into the room beyond. He saw a bed surrounded by silent figures; and only then became conscious of the meaning of the sound that had filled his ears since his coming: the high, long-drawn, wailing of Sophia's piteous struggle for breath. Immediately over her hung Weimann and one of the nurses, just finishing an injection of strychnine. At the foot of the bed sat Madame Dravikine, white, silent, dry-eyed. Across the room, before the largest of the three ikons, knelt Sonya and old Másha, praying, silently. And upon them all, even the deathlike figure on the bed, was an air of listening, of waiting, of expectancy, which was presently relieved by the apparition of the tall, lean, boyish figure, who wavered for one moment, and then came hurriedly forward.
Ivan was scarcely conscious of his movements. His limbs were trembling, his hands were icy cold and damp with sweat, his tightened throat seemed as if it must break the drawn muscles in its straining. But his great black eyes shone tearless as he walked straight to the bed and stood gazing down upon the quivering face upturned to him. Then, after a moment of preparation, the dreadful breathing ceased, and a faint, shaking voice replaced it:
"Ivan! Dearest! You have come!"
Taking his mother's transparent hands with a movement of infinite gentleness into his own, Ivan dropped upon his knees by the bedside, his two eyes still fixed longingly, hungrily, upon the beloved face. For an instant he was conscious that others in the room were stealing away, and presently, save for one nurse, he was alone with her who, sixteen years before, had brought him into the world.
In the silence that surrounded him Ivan felt his very soul pierced by a medley of unknown emotions, chief of which was the sense that he stood alone and helpless before a separation that he could not bear. And presently that dread was voiced for him, in the strange, weak, tender tones of his mother's voice:
"I must leave you soon now, Ivan."
At last a sob tore its way through his rigid throat, and his answer was given in a passionate whisper: "No, mother! No!"
"Dear, my body is going. You could not wish to keep me always. And I am so glad, Ivan! So glad! My own mother has been here, at my side, all day. So, then, I shall come and comfort you—at least at the first, while it is most sad for you."