I hastened down the path that passed through the vineyards and entered the town; after hurrying through all the streets and looking in every direction, even at Dame Louise's windows, I came back to the Rhine, and ran along the river bank. Here and there was a figure of a woman, but none of them Annouchka's. It was no longer vexation that consumed me, but a secret terror; still more it was repentance that I felt, boundless pity, finally love--yes, the deepest love. I threw my arms about; I called Annouchka; at first, as the shades of night were deepening, in a low voice, then louder and louder; I repeated a hundred times that I loved her, swearing never to leave her; I would have given all that I possessed to press once more her cold hand, to hear once more her timid voice, to see her once more before me. She had been so near me; she had come to me with such resolution, in all the frankness of her heart; she had brought me her young life, her purity,--and I did not take her in my arms; I had foregone the happiness of seeing her sweet face brighten.--The thought drove me mad! "Where can she have gone? what could she have done?" I cried, in the impotent rage of despair. Something whitish suddenly appeared at the edge of the water. I recognized the place. There, above the grave of a man who drowned himself seventy years before, arose a stone cross, half sunken in the ground, covered with characters almost illegible. My heart was beating as though it would break. The white figure had disappeared. "Annouchka," I cried, in such a fierce voice, that I even frightened myself. But no one answered; I finally decided to go and find out whether Gaguine had not found her. XX. 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.