class="normal">Then--around the window crept something like a sad, sighing, ghostly voice. His face took on a strained, listening, thirstily longing expression. It was like the sob of a tormented soul which has forgotten to take the way to heaven because a great love holds her back to earth--a great love and unrest at an unfulfilled task, an unlifted treasure.

Was it an over-excitement of his nerves of hearing, or the beginning of that mysticism to which, at a certain period of life, quite all great Russian minds fall victim? However this may be, he would have sworn that he heard her voice compassionately and tenderly. There, once more. "Boris! Boris!"

He feels something strange, the calming of a loving presence. A passionate, indescribable longing takes possession of him. He stretches out his arms--it is gone! He shakes as with frost, sweat stands upon his brow. He thought of the repellant coldness which had met his lips when he had raised the corpse from the lace-edged pillows of the coffin.

No; death took all, it lets nothing return. Weak-headed nervousness to believe in such a thing! There is nothing but life! And while the longing for the unattainable heavenly still consumes his heart, he murmurs hoarsely: "Yes, to live, to live!"