"
The mother fell into a heavy dreamless sleep.
Tatyana awakened her in the early twilight, when the dusk still
peered through the window with blank eyes, and when brazen sounds
of the church bell floated and melted over the village in the gray,
cold stillness.
"I have prepared the samovar. Take some tea or you'll be cold if
you go out immediately after getting up."
Stepan, combing his tangled beard, asked the mother solicitously
how to find her in the city. To-day the peasant's face seemed
more finished to her. While they drank tea he remarked, smiling:
"How wonderfully things happen!"
"What?" asked Tatyana.
"Why, this acquaintance--so simply."
The mother said thoughtfully, but confidently:
"In this affair there's a marvelous simplicity in everything."
The host and hostess restrained themselves from demonstrativeness
in parting with her; they were sparing of words, but lavish in little
attentions for her comfort.
Sitting in the post, the mother reflected that this peasant would
begin to work carefully, noiselessly, like a mole, without cease,
and that at his side the discontented voice of his wife would always
sound, and the dry burning gleam in her green eyes would never die
out of her so long as she cherished the revengeful wolfish anguish
of a mother for lost children.
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