Insarov read Elena’s note, and at once began to set his room to rights; asked his landlady to take away the medicine-glasses, took off his dressing-gown and put on his coat. His head was swimming and his heart throbbing from weakness and delight. His knees were shaking; he dropped on to the sofa, and began to look at his watch. ‘It’s now a quarter to twelve,’ he said to himself. ‘She can never come before twelve: I will think of something else for a quarter of an hour, or I shall break down altogether. Before twelve she cannot possibly come.’

The door was opened, and in a light silk gown, all pale, all fresh, young and joyful, Elena came in, and with a faint cry of delight she fell on his breast.

‘You are alive, you are mine,’ she repeated, embracing and stroking his head. He was almost swooning, breathless at such closeness, such caresses, such bliss.

She sat down near him, holding him fast, and began to gaze at him with that smiling, and caressing, and tender look, only to be seen shining in the eyes of a loving woman.

Her face suddenly clouded over.

‘How thin you have grown, my poor Dmitri,’ she said, passing her hand over his neck; ‘what a beard you have.’

‘And you have grown thin, my poor Elena,’ he answered, catching her fingers with his lips.

She shook her curls gaily.

‘That’s nothing. You shall see how soon we’ll be strong again! The storm has blown over, just as it blew over and passed away that day when we met in the chapel. Now we are going to live.’

He answered her with a smile only.

‘Ah, what a time we have had, Dmitri, what a cruel time! How can people outlive those they love? I knew beforehand what Andrei Petrovitch would say to me every day, I did really; my life seemed to ebb and flow with yours. Welcome back, my Dmitri!’

He did not know what to say to her. He was longing to throw himself at her feet.

‘Another thing I observed,’ she went on, pushing back his hair —‘I made so many observations all this time in my leisure — when any one is very, very miserable, with what stupid attention he follows everything that’s going on about him! I really sometimes lost myself in gazing at a fly, and all the while such chill and terror in my heart! But that’s all past, all past, isn’t it? Everything’s bright in the future, isn’t it?’

‘You are for me in the future,’ answered Insarov, ‘so it is bright for me.’

‘And for me too! But do you remember, when I was here, not the last time — no, not the last time,’ she repeated with an involuntary shudder, ‘when we were talking, I spoke of death, I don’t know why; I never suspected then that it was keeping watch on us. But you are well now, aren’t you?’

‘I’m much better, I’m nearly well.’

‘You are well, you are not dead. Oh, how happy I am!’

A short silence followed.

‘Elena?’ said Insarov.

‘Well, my dearest?’

‘Tell me, did it never occur to you that this illness was sent us as a punishment?’

Elena looked seriously at him.

‘That idea did come into my head, Dmitri. But I thought: what am I to be punished for? What duty have I transgressed, against whom have I sinned? Perhaps my conscience is not like other people’s, but it was silent; or perhaps I am guilty towards you? I hinder you, I stop you.’

‘You don’t stop me, Elena; we will go together.’

‘Yes, Dmitri, let us go together; I will follow you. . . . That is my duty. I love you. . . . I know no other duty.’

‘O Elena!’ said Insarov, ‘what chains every word of yours fastens on me!’

‘Why talk of chains?’ she interposed. ‘We are free people, you and I. Yes,’ she went on, looking musingly on the floor, while with one hand she still stroked his hair, ‘I experienced much lately of which I had never had any idea! If any one had told me beforehand that I, a young lady, well brought up, should go out from home alone on all sorts of made-up excuses, and to go where? to a young man’s lodgings — how indignant I should have been! And that has all come about, and I feel no indignation whatever. Really!’ she added, and turned to Insarov.

He looked at her with such an expression of adoration, that she softly dropped her hand from his hair over his eyes.

‘Dmitri!’ she began again, ‘you don’t know of course, I saw you there in that dreadful bed, I saw you in the clutches of death, unconscious.’

‘You saw me?’

‘Yes.’

He was silent for a little. ‘And Bersenyev was here?’

She nodded.

Insarov bowed down before her. ‘O Elena!’ he wh............