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Serafima Aleksandrovna tried to console herself with the hope that Lelechka would get well, and would again laugh and play yet this seemed to her an unthinkable happiness! And Lelechka grew feebler from hour to hour. All simulated tranquillity, so as not to frighten Serafima Aleksandrovna, but their masked faces only made her sad.
The next day Serafima Aleksandrovna, absorbed in her joyous cares for Lelechka, had forgotten Fedosya's words of the day before. But when she returned to the nursery, after having ordered the dinner, and she heard Lelechka suddenly cry "Tiu-tiu!" from under the table, a feeling of fear suddenly took hold of her.
Why does she not get tired of the same thing of eternally closing her eyes, and of hiding her face? Perhaps," thought Serafima Aleksandrovna, "she is not as strongly drawn to the world as other children, who are attracted by many things. If this is so, is it not a sign of organic weakness? Is it not a germ of the unconscious non-desire to live?"
The priest and deacon paced up and down the room; clouds of blue smoke drifted in the air, and there was a smell of incense. There was an oppressive feeling of heaviness in Serafima Aleksandrovna's head as she approached Lelechka. Lelechka lay there still and pale, and smiled pathetically.
"She's still so little," said Serafima Aleksandrovna. "In any case, this is but my humble opinion. I don't insist. It's your kingdom there." "I'll think it over," his wife answered, smiling, as he did, coldly but genially. Then they began to talk of something else.
Serafima Aleksandrovna herself began the game once or twice, though she played it with a heavy heart. She suffered as though committing an evil deed with full consciousness. It was a sad day for Serafima Aleksandrovna. Lelechka was about to fall asleep. No sooner had she climbed into her little bed, protected by a network on all sides, than her eyes began to close from fatigue.
Lelechka was dressed, placed in a little coffin, and carried into the parlour. Serafima Aicksandrovna was standing by the coffin and looking dully at her dead child. Sergey Modestovich went to his wife and, consoling her with cold, empty words, tried to draw her away from the coffin. Seranma Aleksandrovna smiled. "Go away," she said quietly. "Lelechka is playing. She'll be up in a minute."
Only I'd like to say something you see Lelechka is always hiding herself that's not good." Fedosya looked at her mistress with fixed eyes, which had grown round from fright. "Why not good?" asked Serafima Aleksandrovna, with vexation, succumbing involuntarily to vague fears. "I can't tell you how bad it is," said Fedosya, and her face expressed the most decided confidence.
But as she had got into the habit of hiding from her mother in some corner, and of crying out "Tiu-tiu!" so even that day she returned more than once to the game. Serafima Aleksandrovna tried desperately to amuse Lelechka. This was not so easy because restless, threatening thoughts obtruded themselves constantly. "Why does Lelechka keep on recalling the tiu-tiu?
"Knows!" exclaimed Serafima Aleksandrovna in irritation, as though she wished to protect herself somehow from this sudden anxiety. "What nonsense! Please don't come to me with any such notions in the future. Now you may go." Fedosya, dejected, her feelings hurt, left her mistress. "What nonsense!
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