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.