Princess Marya makes the two-week journey to see her brother for the last time. Her love for Nikolay provides her with the spiritual strength she needs to encounter the dying Andrey. Greeted tenderly by the Rostovs, pitying Count Ilya Andreitch, who now seems aged and bewildered, Princess Marya feels warmth for Natasha. As she sees Natasha's face expressing boundless love for Prince Andrey, Marya embraces her and the two women weep together. Natasha describes"a sudden change" in Prince Andrey and says he has lost his hold on life.
Andrey's manner to Marya is cold, his impersonal conversation shows he is absorbed by inner thoughts that a living person cannot conceive, and he seems to blame his sister for being healthy and alive. He barely shows interest in his son, now a serious-eyed 7-year-old.
The"sudden change" Natasha speaks of is the result of Andrey's rejecting love and life and choosing death. It occurred two days before when, falling asleep, he suddenly recognized that love is God, that dying is a particle of love, a way of returning to the universal and eternal sources of love. He dreams that death has stolen into the room and he could not prevent it and he has died. Then he awakens. Yes, death is an awakening, he tells himself, and suddenly feels delivered of a heavy bondage. This moral change has left him softened and gentle and Natasha realizes he will die. Remaining at his beside to the last, Natasha and Marya see him slip away into death. It is too soon for them to weep at the loss; rather they weep at the emotion and awe that fills their souls before"the solemn and simple mystery of death accomplished before their eyes."
