“No, I won’t go to sleep, Mamma,” I reply, though almost inaudibly, for pleasant dreams are filling all my soul.  The sound sleep of childhood is weighing my eyelids down, and for a few moments I sink into slumber and oblivion until awakened by some one.  I feel in my sleep as though a soft hand were caressing me.  I know it by the touch, and, though still dreaming, I seize hold of it and press it to my lips.  Every one else has gone to bed, and only one candle remains burning in the drawing-room.  Mamma has said that she herself will wake me.  She sits down on the arm of the chair in which I am asleep, with her soft hand stroking my hair, and I hear her beloved, well-known voice say in my ear: 

“Get up, my darling.  It is time to go by-by.”

No envious gaze sees her now.  She is not afraid to shed upon me the whole of her tenderness and love.  I do not wake up, yet I kiss and kiss her hand.

“Get up, then, my angel.”

She passes her other arm round my neck, and her fingers tickle me as they move across it.  The room is quiet and in half-darkness, but the tickling has touched my nerves and I begin to awake.  Mamma is sitting near me—­that I can tell—­and touching me; I can hear her voice and feel her presence.  This at last rouses me to spring up, to throw my arms around her neck, to hide my head in her bosom, and to say with a sigh: 

“Ah, dear, darling Mamma, how much I love you!”

She smiles her sad, enchanting smile, takes my head between her two hands, kisses me on the forehead, and lifts me on to her lap.

“Do you love me so much, then?” she says.  Then, after a few moments’ silence, she continues:  “And you must love me always, and never forget me.  If your Mamma should no longer be here, will you promise never to forget her—­never, Nicolinka? and she kisses me more fondly than ever.

“Oh, but you must not speak so, darling Mamma, my own darling Mamma!” I exclaim as I clasp her knees, and tears of joy and love fall from my eyes.

How, after scenes like this, I would go upstairs, and stand before the ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, “God bless Papa and Mamma!” and repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely in a single emotion!

After saying my prayers I would wrap myself up in the bedclothes.  My heart would feel light, peaceful, and happy, and one dream would follow another.  Dreams of what?  They were all of them vague, but all of them full of pure love and of a sort of expectation of happiness.  I remember, too, that I used to think about Karl Ivanitch and his sad lot.  He was the only unhappy being whom I knew, and so sorry would I feel for him, and so much did I love him, that tears would fall from my eyes as I thought, “May God give him happiness, and enable me to help him and to lessen his sorrow.  I could make any sacrifice for him!” Usually, also, there would be some