Quickly going up the vineyard road, I perceived a light in Annouchka's room. This sight calmed me a little. I approached the house; the entrance door was closed. I knocked. A window that had no light opened softly in the lower story, and Gaguine thrust out his head.

"You have found her?" I asked him.

"She has returned," he answered in a low voice. "She is in her room and is going to bed. All is for the best."

"God be praised!" I cried, in a paroxysm of indescribable joy. "God be praised! Then everything is all right; but you know we have not had our talk together."

"Not now," he answered, half closing the window; "another time. In the meanwhile, farewell!"

"To-morrow," I said, "to-morrow will decide everything."

"Farewell," repeated Gaguine.

The window closed.

I was upon the point of knocking at it,—I wished to speak to Gaguine one instant longer, to ask his sister's hand,—but a proposal of marriage at such an hour! "To-morrow," I thought, "to-morrow I shall be happy."

Happiness has no to-morrow; it has no yesterday; it remembers not the past; it has no thought of the future; it knows only the present, and yet this present is not a day, but an instant.

I know not how I returned to Z.—It was not my legs that carried me, it was not a boat that took me to the other side; I was wafted along, so to speak, by strong, large wings.

I passed a thicket where a nightingale was singing. I stopped, listened a long time; it seemed to be singing of my love and my happiness.