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 talking to him, he imagined that he understbod; but when he was alone, he really could not remember or comprehend that such a short and easy word as vdrug, "suddenly," is a circumstance of the mode of action; but still he was sorry that he had tried his teacher.

He seized on a moment when his teacher was silently looking into a book, to ask him:—

"Mikhaïl Ivanovitch, when will your birthday be?"

"You would do better to think about your work; birthdays have no importance for a reasonable being. It is only a day just like any other, and must be spent in work."

Serozha looked attentively at his teacher, studied his sparse beard, his eye-glasses far down on his nose, and got into such a deep brown study that he heard nothing of what the teacher was explaining to him. He had a dim comprehension that his teacher did not believe what he said. By the tone in which he said it, he felt that it was incredible.

"But why do they all try to say to me the most tiresome things and the most useless things, and all in the same way? Why does this man keep me from him, and not love me?" he asked himself sadly, and he could not discover any answer.

CHAPTER XXVII

the professor, came the lesson with his father. Serozha, while waiting for him, sat at the table, playing with his pen-knife, and he fell into new thoughts.

One of his favorite occupations was to look for his mother while he was out walking. He did not believe in death as a general thing; and specially he did not believe that his mother was dead, in spite of what the Countess Lidia Ivanovna told him, and though his father confirmed it. And therefore, after they told him that she was dead, he used to watch for her while he was out for his walk. Every tall, graceful woman with dark hair he imagined to be his mother; at the sight of such a woman,