Lelechka was dressed, placed in a little coffin, and carried into the parlour. Serafima Aleksandrovna was standing by the coffin and looking dully at her dead child. Sergey Modestovich went to his wife and, consoling her with cold, empty words, tried to draw her away from the coffin. Serafima Aleksandrovna smiled.  
“Go away,” she said quietly. “Lelechka is playing. She’ll be up in a minute.”
 
“Sima, my dear, don’t agitate yourself,” said Sergey Modestovich in a whisper. “You must resign yourself to your fate.”
 
“She’ll be up in a minute,” persisted Serafima Aleksandrovna, her eyes fixed on the dead little girl.
 
Sergey Modestovich looked round him cautiously: he was afraid of the unseemly and of the ridiculous.
 
“Sima, don’t agitate yourself,” he repeated. “This would be a miracle, and miracles do not happen in the nineteenth century.”
 
No sooner had he said these words t............