XXVI + 

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 bedcover. 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 hunchbacked, 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. + 