When she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was farther than ever from the four-year-old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she left him! But it was he with his head, his lips, his soft neck and broad little shoulders.

`Seriozha!' she repeated, in the child's very ear.

He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tousled head from side to side, as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Quietly and inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother standing motionless before him, then all at once he smiled a blissful smile, and shutting his eyes again, rolled not backward but toward her, into her arms.

`Seriozha! My darling boy!' she said, breathing hard and putting her arms around his plump little body.

`Mother!' he said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch her hands with different parts of him.

Smiling sleepily still, with closed eyes, he flung his fat little arms round her shoulders, rolled toward her, with the delicious sleepy warmth and fragrance that is only found in children, and began rubbing his face against her neck and shoulders.

`I knew,' he said, opening his eyes. `It's my birthday today. I knew you'd come. I'll get up directly.'

And saying that he dropped asleep.

Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in her absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs so long now, that were thrust out below the quilt; she knew those short-cropped curls on his neck in which she had so often kissed him. She touched all this and could say nothing; tears choked her.

`What are you crying for, mother?' he said, waking up completely. `Mother, what are you crying for?' he cried in a tearful voice.

`I?... I won't cry... I'm crying for joy. It's so long since I've seen you. I won't, I won't,' she said, gulping down her tears and turning away. `Come, it's time for you to dress now,' she added, after a pause, and, never letting go his hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair, where his clothes were put ready for him.

`How do you dress without me? How...' she made an attempt to talk simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.

`I don't have a cold bath - papa didn't order it. And you've not seen Vassilii Lukich? He'll come in soon. Why, you're sitting on my clothes!'

And Seriozha went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and smiled.

`Mother, darling, sweet one!' he shouted, flinging himself on her again and hugging her. It was as if only now, on seeing her smile, he fully grasped what had happened. `I don't want that on,' he said, taking off her hat. And, as it were, seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to kissing her again.

`But what did you think about me? You didn't think I was dead?'

`I never believed it.'

`You didn't believe it, my sweet?'