“You see—a woman who—has given birth to children—such a woman has altogether different eyes.”
“So? What kind are they then?”
“Shameless!” Foma blurted out.
Medinskaya broke into her silver laughter, and Foma, looking at her, also began to laugh.
“Excuse me!” said he, at length. “Perhaps I’ve said something wrong, improper.”
“Oh, no, no! You cannot say anything improper. You are a pure, amiable boy. And so, my eyes are not shameless?”
“Yours are like an angel’s!” announced Foma with enthusiasm, looking at her with beaming eyes. And she glanced at him, as she had never done before; her look was that of a mother, a sad look of love mingled with fear for the beloved.
“Go, dear one. I am tired; I need a rest,” she said to him, as she rose without looking at him. He went away submissively.
For some time after this incident her attitude toward him was stricter and more sincere, as though she pitied him, but later their relations assumed the old form of the cat-and-mouse play.
Foma’s relation toward Medinskaya could not escape his godfather’s notice, and one day the old man asked him, with a malicious grimace: