Page 1161 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘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

1160 of 1759