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and, quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.
She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel
of toys she had chosen the day before in a toy shop with such love and
sorrow.
Chapter 31.
As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she
had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the
least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting
back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while
understand why she was there. “Yes, it’s all over, and I am again
alone,” she said to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat down
in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing
on a table between the windows, she tried to think.
The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she
should dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, “Presently.” A
footman offered her coffee. “Later on,” she said.
The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best,
came in with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed little
baby, on seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little
hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with
a float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her
embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile,
not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to clutch,
crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which
she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna did,
and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh