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The old woman had invented this sign, quite suddenly, herself; and she was evidently very proud of it. Lelechka was asleep, and Serafima Aleksandrovna was sitting in her own room, thinking with joy and tenderness of Lelechka.
Lelechka suddenly glanced toward her mother's corner and screamed with joy. "I've found 'oo," she cried out loudly and joyously, mispronouncing her words in a way that again made her mother happy.
She saw clearly that there could be no possible connexion between a child's quite ordinary diversion and the continuation of the child's life. She made a special effort that evening to occupy her mind with other matters, but her thoughts returned involuntarily to the fact that Lelechka loved to hide herself.
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.
Mamma hid behind the cupboard, and exclaimed: "Tiu-tiu, baby girl!" Lelechka ran round the room and looked into all the corners, making believe, as her mother had done before, that she was seeking though she really knew all the time where her mamochka was standing. "Where's my mamochka?" asked Lelechka. "She's not here, and she's not here," she kept on repeating, as she ran from corner to corner.
Serafima Aleksandrovna remained standing over Lelechka's bed a long while, and she kept looking at Lelechka with tenderness and fear. "I'm a mother: is it possible that I shouldn't be able to protect her?" she thought, as she imagined the various ills that might befall Lelechka. She prayed long that night, but the prayer did not relieve her sadness. Several days passed. Lelechka caught cold.
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.
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."
Lelechka laughed long and merrily, her head close to her mother's knees, and all of her cuddled up between her mother's white hands. Her mother's eyes glowed with passionate emotion. "Now, mamochka, you hide," said Lelechka, as she ceased laughing. Her mother went to hide. Lelechka turned away as though not to see, but watched her mamochka stealthily all the time.
Though she reproached herself at once for this unfounded, superstitious dread, nevertheless she could not enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of Lelechka's favourite game, and she tried to divert Lelechka's attention to something else. Lelechka was a lovely and obedient child. She eagerly complied with her mother's new wishes.
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