Anna Karenina - Part 5

When the nurse went into the nursery, Seryozha was telling his

mother how he and Nadinka had had a fall in sledging downhill,

and had turned over three times. She was listening to the sound

of his voice, watching his face and the play of expression on it,

touching his hand, but she did not follow what he was saying.

She must go, she must leave him,--this was the only thing she was

thinking and feeling. She heard the steps of Vassily Lukitch

coming up to the door and coughing; she heard, too, the steps of

the nurse as she came near; but she sat like one turned to stone,

incapable of beginning to speak or to get up.

"Mistress, darling!" began the nurse, going up to Anna and

kissing her hands and shoulders. "God has brought joy indeed to

our boy on his birthday. You aren't changed one bit."

"Oh, nurse dear, I didn't know you were in the house," said Anna,

rousing herself for a moment.

"I'm not living here, I'm living with my daughter. I came for

the birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!"

The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and began kissing her hand

again.

Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one

hand and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his fat

little bare feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to

his mother threw him into an ecstasy.

"Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes..." he

was beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying

something in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother's

face there was a look of dread and something like shame, which

was so strangely unbecoming to her.

She went up to him.

"My sweet!" she said.

She could not say _good-bye_, but the expression on her face said

it, and he understood. "Darling, darling Kootik!" she used the

name by which she had called him when he was little, "you won't

forget me? You..." but she could not say more.

How often afterwards she thought of words she might have said.

But now she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing.

But Seryozha knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood

that she was unhappy and loved him. He understood even what the

nurse had whispered. He had caught the words "always at nine

o'clock," and he knew that this was said of his father, and that

his father and mother could not meet. That he understood, but

one thing he could not understand--why there should be a look of

dread and shame in her face?... She was not in fault, but she

was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He would have liked

to put a question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he

did not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for her.

Silently he pressed close to her and whispered, "Don't go yet.

He won't come just yet."