Yet it was strange that the big Russia had need of him, just one common peasant. The great Russia had so many men that were strong and powerful, men with uniforms that glittered—men that were much cleverer and braver than Anton. Why should the country have need of him? Sasha needed him, and the children. Sasha needed him in the fields and she needed him in her heart too. She had often called him the light of her heart, in the strange words—so different from the words of other women—that Sasha often used. And he knew by her face that she needed him. She didn’t have to tell him so. He knew by the kindling of her face, as of a curtain behind which suddenly a candle appears. So her face would light up when she saw him. Sasha would mind greatly if she never saw him again. He was dying because it was a glorious thing to die for one’s country—for the White Tsar, the little Father. You died to protect your country, so that your great country might live forever. But if you weren’t there to know that it lived forever!—now why couldn’t he think of the world without Anton Tarasovitch in it? Why did he land against a black wall every time he tried to think of tomorrow without Anton Tarasovitch? It was needful that he die to save his country. What if, to the general, he _were_ only one of thousands and to Sasha and the children all of life—nevertheless, if every man should think that, then there would be no one at all to save the country. It was rather clever of him to figure it out so, especially with the fire in his side that made his head so light and his thoughts fly off from it and refuse to anchor down for more than a minute. It was clever of him to reason it out—Anton Tarasovitch who had never been to a University—that if every man should say to himself, “O, I don’t count. Just one more or less!”—then there would be no army at all to fight the Tsar’s battles. Yet he was not fighting or dying now to save Sasha. Nor was he dying to save his children even in the years to come. That wouldn’t be bad—to die so that years afterwards, even though it might be many years afterwards, one’s children would prosper and would live more happily. That would be a sort of living when one was dead, because one’s children were in a way oneself in different bodies. But he couldn’t see how Maxim and Ignat and Sofya and Tatya would at any time be better off because he was dying right now. He couldn’t see but that the land would be poorer and that they would have to work harder because he and the other peasants were dying for the Little Father and for their country.