It was another night.
Volodya awoke suddenly. The darkness enveloped him, and it stirred
without sound. He freed his hands, then raised them, and followed their
movements with his eyes. He did not see his hands in the darkness, but
he imagined that he saw them wanly stirring before him. They were dark
and mysterious, and they held in them the affliction and the murmur of
lonely yearning.
His mother also did not sleep; her grief tormented her. She lit a
candle and went quietly toward her son’s room to see how he slept. She
opened the door noiselessly and looked timidly at Volodya’s bed.
A streak of yellow light trembled on the wall and intersected Volodya’s
red bed-cover. The lad stretched his arms toward the light and, with a
beating heart, followed the shadows. He did not even ask himself where
the light came from. He was wholly obsessed by the shadows. His eyes
were fixed on the wall, and there was a gleam of madness in them.
The streak of light broadened, the shadows moved in a startled way;
they were morose and hunch-backed, like homeless, roaming women who
were hurrying to reach somewhere with old burdens that dragged them
down.
Volodya’s mother, trembling with fright, approached the bed and quietly
aroused her son.
“Volodya!”
Volodya came to himself. For some seconds he glanced at his mother with
large eyes, then he shivered from head to foot and, springing out of
bed, fell at his mother’s feet, embraced her knees, and wept.
“What dreams you do dream, Volodya!” exclaimed his mother sorrowfully.