“It is not true, it is not he⁠ ⁠… that is not my Kóstya!” exclaimed the mother in terror, looking at the horrible old man⁠—horrible just because there was something in his glance and about his lips that reminded her of Kóstya’s own peculiarities. “It is well that this is only a dream,” thought she. “There is the real Kóstya⁠ ⁠…” and she saw her white, naked Kóstya, 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.