ght both usually parted
with hearts overflowing with secret remorse at the thought that there
was actual relief in the knowledge that the day was over. Moreover, as
the weeks passed, the Sunday evenings together became shorter and more
short. Madame Gregoriev, smiling through the agony that yet found place
in every line of her face, would confess to fatigue and would resign
herself to the hands of the maid whose duties were daily becoming more
those of a nurse, leaving Ivan to the care of the serfs, who, by their
unfeigned delight in his appearance, generally sent him away from their
quarters about midnight in a very cheerful mood. Later, however, through
the dark hours that followed, Ivan's thoughts instinctively reverted to
his mother, and the strange expression in her face would take a
significance filling his heart with a pain which the morrow's light
could not banish.

Months slid by. The Russian New Year came and went. And now, when Ivan
reached home on Saturday evening, his mother frequently greeted him from
her bed; and on Sunday would sit up only for an hour or two, in her
_chaise-longue_, before the open fire always kept burning in her
up-stairs sitting-room, her frail form clad in the loosest of negligees.
Still, to all the boy's sad and anxious queries, the reply would be:
"Just fatigue, and perhaps a little cold. In a few weeks, you shall see
me quite strong again. Smile for me, Ivan!" And Ivan seemed to accept
the words. But weekly he went back to his work with something added to
the weight now constantly dragging at his heart.

Had Ivan guessed half the truth, however: could he have had one glimpse
of his mother's reason for her constant "fatigue," he would have learned
that the vague disquiet he was bearing was a feather-weight in
comparison to the helpless misery of watching and comprehending the slow
spread and increase of the most pitiless, direfully cruel, of all
diseases.

It had been in the very first week of Ivan's life in the Corps that
Sophia Ivanovna returned, in a kind of numb haze, from the house of the
doctor she had gone to for examination. She stood alone in her own room,
trying to comprehend the fulness of that which had come upon her. All
alone she had made her discovery; and alone had gone to have it
verified. But, in spite of everything, realization was difficult: the
realization that, turn whither she would, there was upon her--upon that
poor, tortured breast, the relentless clutch