And before I could utter a word she was gone. Utterly distraught, I stayed where I was. My head was in a whirl. Across the mad rapture, which filled my whole being, there began to steal a feeling of apprehension.… I looked round. The dim, damp room in which I was standing oppressed me with its low roof and dark walls. I went out and walked with dejected steps towards the house. Vera was waiting for me on the terrace; she went into the house directly I drew near, and at once retreated to her bedroom. I went away. How I spent the night and the next day till the evening I can’t tell you. I only remember that I lay, my face hid in my hands, I recalled her smile before our kiss, I whispered--‘At last, she.…’ I recalled, too, Madame Eltsov’s words, which Vera had repeated to me. She had said to her once, ‘You are like ice; until you melt as strong as stone, but directly you melt there’s nothing of you left.’ Another thing recurred to my mind; Vera and I had once been talking of talent, ability. ‘There’s only one thing I can do,’ she said; ‘keep silent till the last minute.’ I did not understand it in the least at the time. ‘But what is the meaning of her fright?’ I wondered--‘Can she really have seen Madame Eltsov? Imagination!’ I thought, and again I gave myself up to the emotions of expectation. It was on that day I wrote you,--with what thoughts in my head it hurts me to recall--that deceitful letter. In the evening--the sun had not yet set--I took up my stand about fifty paces from the garden gate in a tall thicket on the edge of the lake. I had come from home on foot. I will confess to my shame; fear, fear of the most cowardly kind, filled my heart; I was incessantly starting … but I had no feeling of remorse. Hiding among the twigs, I kept continual watch on the little gate. It did not open. The sun set, the evening drew on; then the stars came out, and the sky turned black. No one appeared. I was in a fever. Night came on. I could bear it no longer; I came cautiously out of the thicket and stole down to the gate. Everything was still in the garden. I called Vera, in a whisper, called a second time, a third.… No voice called back. Half-an-hour more passed by, and an hour; it became quite dark. I was worn out by suspense; I drew the gate towards me, opened it at once, and on tiptoe, like a thief, walked towards the house. I stopped in the shadow of a lime-tree. Almost all the windows in the house had lights in them; people were moving to and fro in the house. This surprised me; my watch, as far as I could make out in the dim starlight, said half-past eleven. Suddenly I heard a noise near the house; a carriage drove out of the courtyard.