A lightning flash seemed to tear the clouds of oblivion from my brain and illuminate the past. I was once more in Vassili's country house ... once more I entered the dim white nursery where my children, like two blonde seraphs, lay asleep.... A lamp hanging between the two little cots lit up an artless picture hanging on the wall—a rippling-haired Madonna standing in a star-lit sky, holding in her youthful arms the infant Jesus with a count's coronet on His head.
Crying softly as I cradled my son's fair head upon my breast, I began:
“When little children sleep, the Virgin Mary
Steps with white feet upon the crescent moon....”
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Tioka grew worse. With glittering eyes and thin red cheeks he cried all day long that he wanted Grania—that he wanted Tania. But Grania had been sent away hurriedly for fear of infection—Count Kamarowsky's sister had come and taken him away—and Tania, alas! the gentle little Tania, far away in the castle of the Tarnowskys, had doubtless long since forgotten her brother Tioka and her heart-broken mother as well.
The doctors shook their heads gravely as they stood by the tumbled cot in which the little boy tossed and moaned ceaselessly: “A train—a train is running over my head. Take it away! It hurts me, it hurts me...” And as they looked into his throat, which was dark red, almost purple in hue, they murmured: “Diphtheria? Scarlet fever?” Then they went away, conversing in low tones, leaving me beside myself with grief and terror.
Kamarowsky watched with me night and day. Sometimes he fell asleep; and when I saw him sleeping, the old, unreasoning hatred for him stirred in my heart again.
Prilukoff had left the Hotel Victoria, and had taken a room at the Bristol to be near us. Occasionally I saw him for a moment standing mournful and depressed outside my door. We looked at each other with anguish-stricken eyes, but we scarcely ever spoke. I had no thought for anything but Tioka.
One night—the fourth since he had been taken ill—the child, who had been dozing for a few moments, awoke coughing and choking.