Slowly passed that day for Elena; still more slowly dragged on the long, long night. Elena sat on her bed, her arms clasping her knees, and her head laid on them; then she walked to the window, pressed her burning forehead against the cold glass, and thought and thought, going over and over the same thoughts till she was exhausted. Her heart seemed turned to stone, she did not feel it, but the veins in her head throbbed painfully, her hair stifled her, and her lips were dry. ‘He will come... he did not say good-bye to mamma... he will not deceive me... Can Andrei Petrovitch have been right? It cannot be... He didn’t promise to come in words... Can I have parted from him for ever----?’ Those were the thoughts that never left her, literally never left her; they did not come and come again; they were for ever turning like a mist moving about in her brain. ‘He loves me!’ suddenly flashed through her, setting her whole nature on fire, and she gazed fixedly into the darkness; a secret smile parted her lips, seen by none, but she quickly shook her head, and clasped her hands behind her neck, and again her former thought hung like a mist about her. Before morning she undressed and went to bed, but she could not sleep. The first fiery ray of sunlight fell upon her room... ‘Oh, if he loves me!’ she cried suddenly, and unabashed by the light shining on her, she opened wide her arms... She got up, dressed, and went down. No one in the house was awake yet. She went into the garden, but in the garden it was peaceful, green, and fresh; the birds chirped so confidingly, and the flowers peeped out so gaily that she could not bear it. ‘Oh!’ she thought, ‘if it is true, no blade of grass is happy as I. But is it true?’ She went back to her room and, to kill time, she began changing her dress. But everything slipped out of her hands, and she was still sitting half-dressed before her looking-glass when she was summoned to morning tea. She went down; her mother noticed her pallor, but only said: ‘How interesting you are to-day,’ and taking her in in a glance, she added: ‘How well that dress suits you; you should always put it on when you want to make an impression on any one.’ Elena made no reply, and sat down in a corner. Meanwhile it struck nine o’clock; there were only two haurs now till eleven. Elena tried to read, then to sew, then to read again, then she vowed to herself to walk a hundred times up and down one alley, and paced it a hundred times; then for a long time she watched Anna Vassilyevna laying out the cards for patience... and looked at the clock; it was not yet ten. Shubin came into the drawing-room. She tried to talk to him, and begged his pardon, what for she did not know herself.... Every word she uttered did not cost her effort exactly, but roused a kind of amazement in herself. Shubin bent over her. She expected ridicule, raised her eyes, and saw before her a sorrowful and sympathetic face.... She smiled at this face.