Princess, who had started forward
a little, and seemed to listen. Indeed, there was the sound of a muffled
tread approaching the door. Another instant, and Michael, entering, went
to the bedside, and stood looking down upon his wife. White and strange
was his face, and Madame Dravikine perceived that his hands were
trembling. She saw also, however, how Sophia drew away from him, how the
labor of her breathing was increased. Every one in the room started when
the dying woman's right hand was raised from the sheet and pointed at
the dark and powerful figure bending near.

"You--who have ruined my life--go! Let me die--at last--in peace!" she
said, all the silent torture of her wifehood sounding through the
wavering, feeble voice.

Michael Gregoriev, with a violent start, drew back. He passed his hand
once across his face; then, straightening suddenly, and without another
look at the figure on the bed, he turned and strode from the room,
leaving the door open.

Behind him, silence fell again. Sophia's breathing and the faint mutter
of old Masha's prayers mingled with the wailing of the wind as it rushed
round the corner of the house, and the pelt of freezing rain on the
windows. In the half-lighted room no one either moved or spoke. Minutes
passed. Half an hour. Ivan, standing on his feet, grew desperately
nervous and weary. Madame Dravikine, seated in a corner, leaned back in
her chair and let her heavy eyelids fall.

Presently, out of the night, came the voice of Ivan Veliki, from the
distant Kremlin, booming the eleventh hour. As the last stroke trembled
through the room and echoed into silence, Sophia Gregoriev lifted
herself suddenly to a sitting posture. Her eyes widened, joyously, upon
some distant scene, and a cry of ecstatic wonder broke from her lips.
Then, in a breath, the divine light faded. The lips fell apart. It was
her son who caught her as she fell.

Yet death held something still in store. Minutes later, as Ivan lifted
himself heavily from his kneeling-place beside the bed, and gazed,
through tear-filmed eyes, upon the face of his dead, there broke from
him a little cry, a cry of joy. In its passage to freedom his mother's
soul had stamped her visage with its state. From that face the lines of
many years of anguish, mental and physical, had fallen away, leaving the
flesh as smooth and fair as that of a girl. The eyes were lightly
closed; and, most beautiful of all, her lips had slowly spread into a