with his plump chest, as he sat in his bath, laughing and kicking; and she not only saw, but felt, how he suddenly seized her arm, bared to the elbow, and kissed it and kissed it, and at last bit it—not knowing what else to do with that arm so dear to him.
“Yes, this—and not that horrid old man—is Kóstya,” she said to herself. And thereupon she awoke, and came back with terror to the reality from which there was no awaking.
She went to the nursery. The nurse had already washed and laid out Kóstya’s body. He lay on something raised; his little nose was waxen and sharp, and sunk at the nostrils, and his hair was smoothed back from his brow. Around him candles were burning, and on a small table at his head stood hyacinths—white lilac and pink.
The nurse rose from her chair and, lifting her brows and pouting her lips, looked at the upturned, stonily rigid face. Molly entered at the door opposite, with her simple good-natured face and tear-stained eyes.
“Why, she told me one should not grieve, but she has herself been crying,” thought the mother. Then she turned her gaze to the dead. For a moment she was startled and repelled by the dreadful likeness the dead face bore to that of the old man she had seen in her dream; but she drove away that thought, and, crossing herself, touched with her warm lips the small cold waxen forehead. Then she kissed the crossed rigid little hands; and suddenly the scent of the hyacinths told her, as it were afresh, that he was gone and would return no more; and she was stifled by sobs, and again kissed him on the forehead, and wept for the first time. She wept, but not with despair; her tears were resigned and tender. She suffered, but no longer rebelled or complained; and she knew that what had happened had to be, and was therefore good.
“It is a sin to weep, dear lady,” said the nurse; and, going up to the little corpse, with a folded handkerchief she wiped away the tears the mother had left on Kóstya’s waxen forehead.