Ten minutes in the nursery

Vasily Lukich opens the door, hears the voices, closes it again, and gives them ten minutes, coughing and wiping his eyes. Below, the servants know the master goes to the nursery before nine; Korney reprimands Kapitonich, who flourishes his hands in his face and tells him to go up and say 'be off, please' himself. The old nurse comes in weeping and kissing Anna's hands, and whispers in her ear. Serezha, holding his mother with one hand and his nurse with the other, sees the look of fear and shame come into her face, and catches the words 'always before nine o'clock'. He understands that she is unhappy, that she loves him, and that his parents must not meet, and cannot understand why she looks ashamed. 'Don't go — he is not coming yet!' Anna tells him to love his father, who is better and kinder than she is; he cries out that there is nobody better than she. Steps come, the bonnet is handed over, the boy sobs into his hands. Passing Karenin on the stairs she is seized with loathing, and takes the unopened toys away with her.

The whole household conspires to buy a mother ten minutes, and the tutor's surrender gets its own paragraph of reasoning. Serezha understands everything except the shame, and asks with a look what he is to think of his father — the question the adults have spent five parts avoiding. Anna's instruction to love him survives exactly one flight of stairs. The unopened toys close the chapter.