“He is passing away!” and turned aside. But his mother, nevertheless, with a deft and practised movement, took the boy into her own arms. His long wavy hair had got tangled. She smoothed it, and looked into his face.
“No, I can’t …” she muttered, and quickly but carefully handed him back to the nurse, and left the room.
It was the second week of the boy’s illness, and all that time his mother had wavered between despair and hope. During all that time she had not slept two hours a day. Several times each day she had gone to her bedroom, and, standing before the large icon of the Saviour, in its gold-embossed covering, had prayed God to save her boy. The dark-faced Saviour held in his small dark hand a gilt book, on which was written in black enamel: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
She prayed with all the strength of her soul before that icon. And though in the depth of her heart, even while she prayed, she felt that the mountain would not be removed, and God would not do as she willed, but as He willed, she still prayed, repeating the familiar prayers, and some that she composed herself and repeated aloud with special fervour.
Now that she knew he was dead, she felt as if something had snapped in her head and was whirling round; and when she reached her bedroom she looked at all the things there with astonishment, as though not recognizing the place. Then she lay down on the bed, her head falling not on the pillow but on her husband’s folded dressing-gown, and she lost consciousness in sleep.
In her sleep she saw her Kóstya, with his curly hair and thin white neck, healthy and merry, sitting in his little armchair, swinging his plump little legs, pouting his lips, and carefully seating his boy-doll on the papier-mâché horse which had lost one leg and had a hole in its back.