“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 goodbye , 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.