Send somebody after Mayakin!" His enormous figure looked as though it had grown bigger, and intoxicated with joy, he stupidly tossed about the room; he was smiling, rubbing his hands and casting fervent glances at the images; he crossed himself swinging his hand wide.

At last he went up to his wife.
His eyes first of all caught a glimpse of the little red body, which the midwife was bathing in a tub.

Noticing him, Ignat stood up on tiptoes, and, folding his hands behind his back, walked up 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.