“‘I? I will not cry any more—it is for joy. It is all over now,’ said she, drying her tears and turning around. ‘Nu! go and get dressed,’ she added, after she had grown a little calmer, but still holding Serozha’s hand. She sat down near the bed on a chair which held the child’s clothing. ‘How do you dress without me? How’—she wanted to speak simply and gayly, but she could not, and again she turned her head away.
“‘I don’t wash in cold water any more; papa has forbidden it: but you have not seen Vasíli Lukitch? Here he comes. But you are sitting on my things.’ And Serozha laughed heartily. She looked at him and smiled.
“‘Mamma! dúshenka, golúbtchika!’ [dear little soul, darling], he cried again, throwing himself into her arms, as though he now better understood what had happened to him, as he saw her smile.
“‘Take it off,’ said he, pulling off her hat. And seeing her head bare, he began to kiss her again.
“‘What did you think of me? Did you believe that I was dead?’
“‘I never believed it.’
“‘You believed me alive, my precious?’
“‘I knew it! I knew it!’ he replied, repeating his favorite phrase; and, seizing the hand which was smoothing his hair, he pressed the palm of it to his little mouth, and began to kiss it.”
“Vasíli Lukitch, meantime, not at first knowing who this lady was, but learning from their conversation that it was Serozha’s mother, the woman who had deserted her husband, and whom he did not know, as he had not come into the house till after her departure, was in great perplexity. Ought he to tell Alekséi Aleksandrovitch? On mature reflection he came to the conclusion that his duty consisted in going to dress Serozha at the usual hour, without paying any attention to a third person—his mother, or any one else. But as he reached the door and opened it, the sight of the caresses between the mother and child, the sound of their voices and their words, made him change his mind. He shook his head, sighed, and quietly closed the door. ‘I will wait ten minutes longer,’ he said to himself, coughing slightly, and wiping his eyes.
“There was great excitement among the servants; they all knew that the baruina had come, and that Kapitonuitch had let her in, and that she was in the child’s room; they knew, too, that their master was in the habit of going to Serozha every morning at nine o’clock: each one felt that the husband and wife ought not to meet, that it must be prevented.