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A BIOGRAPHY
293
party, and Sönya interested herself in it to the last,
wishing that her chjld should not miss this pleasure.
She begged her friends to help her to get what was
required, and when, on Monday evening, the child came
to her mother dressed in a gipsy costume, Sönya smiled
kindly on her little daughter, and hoped she would
enjoy herself. Only a few hours later the child was
roused from her sleep to receive her mother’s dying
look, which was full of tenderness.
On the Monday evening both the Mends who had
nursed her during the last few days had left her, and a
St. Elizabeth’s sister took their place. The doctors did
not apprehend any immediate danger. They seemed
rather to believe the illness would last some time.
The friends, therefore, considered it wiser to forego
the night-nursing and spare their strength.
At Sonya’s own desire they were to rest that night,
as there seemed no special need for their presence.
Precisely on that night the great crisis came.
Sönya lay in deep sleep when her friends left her.
But at two o’clock she awoke. The terrible
death-agony had begun. She showed no sign of
consciousness. She could neither speak nor move, nor even
swallow. This lasted for two hours. Only at the last
moment did one of her friends, summoned tardily by
the nurse, arrive.
Alone—alone with a hired stranger, a nurse who
did not even speak her language—she had to struggle
through the last and bitter battle. Who knows what
consolation a beloved voice, the touch of a loving hand,
might have been to Sönya during those two terrible
hours?
I wish even that a Russian priest could have read
the parting prayers to her during that time. With the
veneration in which she still held the Orthodox religion,
19*
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