Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 29
Anna still mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what the old man
was saying.
“This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not being tidy. His honor’s in the old
parlor now,” the hall porter said, panting. “Excuse me, wait a little, your excellency;
I’ll just see,” he said, and overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared
behind it. Anna stood still waiting. “He’s only just awake,” said the hall porter,
coming out. And at the very instant the porter said this, Anna caught the sound of a
childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to
see him living before her eyes.
“Let me in; go away!” she said, and went in through the high doorway. On the
right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the boy. His little body
bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was stretching and still yawning.
The instant his lips came together they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and
with that smile he slowly and deliciously rolled back again.
“Seryozha!” she whispered, going noiselessly up to him.
When she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she had been feeling
a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at four years old, when
she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as when she had left
him; he was still further from the four-year-old baby, more grown and thinner. How
thin his face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed
since she left him! But it was he with his head, his lips, his soft neck and broad little
shoulders.
“Seryozha!” she repeated just in the child’s ear.
He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled head from side to side
as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Slowly and inquiringly he
looked for several seconds at his mother standing motionless before him, then all
at once he smiled a blissful smile, and shutting his eyes, rolled not backwards but
towards her into her arms.
“Seryozha! my darling boy!” she said, breathing hard and putting her arms round
his plump little body. “Mother!” he said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch
her hands with different parts of him.
Smiling sleepily still with closed eyes, he flung fat little arms round her shoulders,
rolled towards her, with the delicious sleepy warmth and fragrance that is only
found in children, and began rubbing his face against her neck and shoulders.
“I know,” he said, opening his eyes; “it’s my birthday today. I knew you’d come.
I’ll get up directly.”
And saying that he dropped asleep.
Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in her
absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs so long now, that were thrust
out below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his neck in which she had so often
kissed him. She touched all this and could say nothing; tears choked her.
“What are you crying for, mother?” he said, waking completely up. “Mother,
what are you crying for?” he cried in a tearful voice.
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