to him, stepping carefully and comically putting forth his lips.
The little one was whimpering and sprawling in the water, naked,
impotent and pitiful.

"Look out there! Handle him more carefully! He hasn't got any
bones yet," said Ignat to the midwife, softly.

She began to laugh, opening her toothless mouth, and cleverly
throwing the child over from one hand to the other.

"You better go to your wife."

He obediently moved toward the bed and asked on his way:

"Well, how is it, Natalya?"

Then, on reaching her, he drew back the bed curtain, which had
thrown a shadow over the bed.

"I'll not survive this," said she in a low, hoarse voice.

Ignat was silent, fixedly staring at his wife's face, sunk in the
white pillow, over which her dark locks were spread out like dead
snakes. Yellow, lifeless, with black circles around her large,
wide-open eyes--her face was strange to him. And the glance of
those terrible eyes, motionlessly fixed somewhere in the distance
through the wall--that, too, was unfamiliar to Ignat. His heart,
compressed by a painful foreboding, slackened its joyous throbbing.

"That's nothing. That's nothing. It's always like this," said he