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And as the porter said it, Anna heard the sound of a child’s yawn. From the sound of the yawn alone she recognized her son and could see him alive before her.

‘Let me in, let me in, go away!’ she said, and went through the tall doorway. To the right of the door stood a bed, and on the bed a boy sat upright in nothing but an unbuttoned shirt, his little body arched, stretching and finishing a yawn. As his lips came together, they formed themselves into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and sweetly fell back again.

‘Seryozha!’ she whispered, approaching him inaudibly.

While they had been apart, and with that surge of love she had been feeling all the time recently, she had imagined him as a four-year-old boy, the way she had loved him most. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from being a four-year-old, was taller and thinner. What was this! How thin his face was, how short his hair! How long his arms! How he had changed since she left him! But this was he, with his shape of head, his lips, his soft neck and broad shoulders.

‘Seryozha!’ she repeated just over the child’s ear.

He propped himself on his elbow, turned his tousled head from side to side as if looking for something, and opened his eyes. For several seconds he gazed quietly and questioningly at his mother standing motionless before him, then suddenly smiled blissfully and, closing his sleepy eyes again, fell, not back now, but towards her, towards her arms.

‘Seryozha! My sweet boy!’ she said, choking and putting her arms around his plump body.

‘Mama!’ he said, moving under her arms, so as to touch them with different parts of his body.

Smiling sleepily, his eyes still shut, he shifted his plump hands from the back of the bed to her shoulders, snuggled up to her, enveloping her with that sweet, sleepy smell and warmth that only children have, and began rubbing his face against her neck and shoulders.

‘I knew it,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘Today’s my birthday. I knew you’d come. I’ll get up now.’

And he was falling asleep again as he said it.

Anna looked him over greedily; she saw how he had grown and changed during her absence. She did and did not recognize his bare feet, so big now, sticking out from under the blanket, recognized those cheeks, thinner now, those locks of hair cut short on the back of his neck, where she had so often kissed them. She touched it all and could not speak; tears choked her.

‘What are you crying for, mama?’ he said, now wide awake. ‘Mama, what are you crying for?’ he raised his tearful voice.

‘I? I won’t cry ... I’m crying from joy. I haven’t seen you for so long. I won’t, I won‘t,’ she said, swallowing her tears and turning away. ‘Well, it’s time you got dressed,’ she added after a pause, recovering herself; and without letting go of his hand, she sat by his bed on a chair where his clothes were lying ready.

‘How do you get dressed without me? How ...’ She wanted to begin talking simply and cheerfully, but could not and turned away again.

‘I don’t wash with cold water, papa told me not to. And did you see Vassily Lukich? He’ll come. And you sat on my clothes!’ Seryozha burst out laughing.

She looked at him and smiled.

‘Mama, darling, dearest!’ he cried, rushing to her again and embracing her. As if it were only now, seeing her smile, that he understood clearly what had happened. ‘No need for that,’ he said, taking her hat off. And, as if seeing her anew without a hat, he again began kissing her.

‘But what have you been thinking about me? You didn’t think I was dead?’

‘I never believed it.’

‘Didn’t you, my love?’

‘I knew it, I knew it!’ He repeated his favourite phrase and, seizing her hand, which was caressing his hair, he pressed her palm to his mouth and began to kiss it.

XXX

Meanwhile Vassily Lukich, who did not understand at first who this lady was, and learning from the conversation that she was the same mother who had