Birth was a strange thing now! He had never really thought of it before, but wasn’t it a strange thing that each time a person was born into the world, there should be pain and the long months of waiting. Then in one second an Austrian shell could blow away the body that some woman had waited for and had carried in her own body. In one second—why, so he had been waited for—he, Anton Tarasovitch. Now wasn’t that wonderful!—and he had never until this minute really thought of it. He, Anton Tarasovitch, had been carried in the body of his mother and had been born in pain and in rejoicing. Why, it was like a miracle! And he had thought so lightly of it, had just taken it for granted that he should be born and that she should love him. He would like to make it up to her in some way now. But it was too late. She had been dead for very many years now and he also was dying. Well, he could tell her about it when he saw her with the saints in Heaven. Heaven! He would go there, of course, because he had always, since a boy, been obedient and had done just what the priests had told him. He ought to think now about Heaven. But somehow he did not care to think about it, and the strange part was that it did not trouble him that he did not care. Even if he woke tomorrow in Heaven, he would not be the same Anton. He might live forever, but that wouldn’t be the same thing as waking up in the morning with Sasha at his side. He tried to think what “forever” meant, and he fetched up against the same black wall that he had when he had tried to think of a world without Anton Tarasovitch to know himself in it. Forever! ever! ever! No stopping! On and on! But that would be horrible. No! no! he couldn’t bear that. One could do nothing, nothing, to get out of it. Even if one could be blown to pieces with a gun, say a thousand years from now, in Heaven, one’s soul would gather itself together again and go on and on, forever and forever. No, he mustn’t think about it. If he thought about it any more, he would lift his hands and strangle himself, so as to be able to stop thinking about it. Now he would think about Sasha. When he thought about her, he could feel her right next to him. He couldn’t see her face exactly, nor could he see her standing there. And yet it was as if she really _were_ there, and he _could_ see her. That was the way it was when you loved a person. She was, as it were, in you, or at least right next to you, and yet she was separate from you, too.