As I passed Dame Louise's house I heard some one call me. I raised my head and perceived the burgomaster's widow at the window of the room where the previous evening I had seen Annouchka. Upon her lips hovered that disagreeable smile that I had noticed before. She beckoned to me. I turned away, and was about to go on, but she called out that she had something to give me. These words stopped me, and I entered the house. How can I express to you my emotion, when I found myself again in that little room. "To tell the truth," began the old woman, showing me a note, "I should only have given you this if you had come to my house of your own accord; but you are such a fine young man--there!" I took the note; I read upon a little piece of paper the following lines, traced in haste with a pencil:-- "Farewell! we shall see each other no more. It is not through pride that I go away; I cannot do otherwise. Yesterday, when I wept before you, if you had said to me but one _word_, a _single word_, I would have remained. You did not say it.--Who knows? Perhaps it is for the best that it is so. Farewell forever!" She had expected but "_one word_!" Fool that I was! That _word_ I said the previous evening again and again with many tears; I threw it to the wind; I cried it out in the midst of lonely fields: but I did not say it to her; I did not tell her that I loved her! Yes, it was then impossible for me to pronounce that word. In this fatal room, where I found myself face to face with her, I was not yet fully conscious of my love; it did not awaken even then, when in a dull and gloomy silence I stood near her brother,--it only burst forth, sudden and irresistible, a few moments after, when, terrified by the thought of a misfortune, I began to seek her, calling aloud; but then already it was too late!--It is impossible, they will tell me;--I know not if it is impossible, but I know that it was so. Annouchka would not have gone if she had had the least coquetry, if she had not found herself in an essentially false position. An uncertain position that any other woman would have accepted she found intolerable. This did not occur to me. My evil genius, then, at my last interview with Gaguine, under his dark window, had checked that confession which was upon my lips, and thus the last thread that I could have seized had broken in my hands. I returned the same day to L. with my traps, and started for Cologne. I often remember that at the moment when the steamboat left the shore, and when I said farewell to all those streets, to all those places that I should never forget, I perceived Hannchen, the little servant-maid. She was seated upon a bench near the river bank: though yet pale, her face was no longer sorrowful. A handsome young fellow was by her side and laughing with her, whilst at the other side of the Rhine my little Madonna, concealed in the dark foliage of the old ash, followed me sadly with her glance. XXII.