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his birthday. You aren’t changed one bit.”
“Oh, nurse dear, I didn’t know you were in the house,” said Anna,
rousing herself for a moment.
“I’m not living here, I’m living with my daughter. I came for the
birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!”
The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and began kissing her hand
again.
Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one
hand and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his fat little
bare feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to his mother
threw him into an ecstasy.
“Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes...” he
was beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying
something in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother’s face
there was a look of dread and something like shame, which was so
strangely unbecoming to her.
She went up to him.
“My sweet!” she said.
She could not say good-bye, but the expression on her face said it,
and he understood. “Darling, darling Kootik!” she used the name by
which she had called him when he was little, “you won’t forget me?
You...” but she could not say more.
How often afterwards she thought of words she might have said.
But now she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing. But
Seryozha knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she
was unhappy and loved him. He understood even what the nurse had
whispered. He had caught the words “always at nine o’clock,” and he
knew that this was said of his father, and that his father and mother
could not meet. That he understood, but one thing he could not under-
stand—why there should be a look of dread and shame in her face?...
She was not in fault, but she was afraid of him and ashamed of some-
thing. He would have liked to put a question that would have set at
rest this doubt, but he did not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and
he felt for her. Silently he pressed close to her and whispered, “Don’t go
yet. He won’t come just yet.”
The mother held him away from her to see what he was thinking,
what to say to him, and in his frightened face she read not only that he
was speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he ought to
think about his father.
“Seryozha, my darling,” she said, “love him; he’s better and kinder
than I am, and I have done him wrong. When you grow up you will
judge.”
“There’s no one better than you!...” he cried in despair through his
tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her with
all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.
“My sweet, my little one!” said Anna, and she cried as weakly and
childishly as he.
At that moment the door opened. Vassily Lukitch came in.
At the other door there was the sound of steps, and the nurse in a
scared whisper said, “He’s coming,” and gave Anna her hat.
Seryozha sank onto the bed and sobbed, hiding his face in his
hands. Anna removed his hands, once more kissed his wet face, and
with rapid steps went to the door. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked in,
meeting her. Seeing her, he stopped short and bowed his head.
Although she had just said he was better and kinder than she, in
the rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his whole figure in all its
details, feelings of repulsion and hatred for him and jealousy over her
son took possession of her. With a swift gesture she put down her veil,