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 with tears, and throwing her arms around his plump body.

"Mamma!" he whispered, cuddling into his mother's arms so as to feel their encircling pressure.

Smiling sleepily, still with his eyes closed, he took his chubby little hands from the head of the bed and put them on his mother's shoulder and climbed into her lap, having that warm breath of sleep peculiar to children, and pressed his face to his mother's neck and shoulders.

"I knew," he said, opening his eyes; "today is my birthday; I knew that you would come. I am going to get up now."

And as he spoke he fell asleep again.

Anna devoured him with her eyes. She saw how he had grown and changed during her absence. She knew and yet she did not know his bare legs, so much longer now, coming below his nightgown; she recognized his cheeks grown thin; his short hair curled in the neck where she had so often kissed it. She could not keep her hands from him, and not a word was she able to say, and the tears choked her.

"What are you crying for, mamma?" he asked, now entirely awake. "What makes you cry?" he repeated, ready to weep himself.

"I will not cry any more .... I am crying for joy. It is so long since I have seen you. But I will not, I will not cry any more," said she, drying her tears and turning around. "Now go and get dressed," she added, after she had grown a little calmer, but still holding Serozha's hand. She sat down near the bed on a chair which held the child's clothing. "How do you dress without me? How ...." she wanted to speak simply and gayly, but she could not, and again she turned her head away.

"I don't wash in cold water any more, papa has forbidden it; but you have not seen Vasili Lukitch? Here he comes. But you are sitting on my things."

And Serozha laughed heartily. She looked at him and smiled.