‘So much the better, so much the better,’ he thought, as he hurried home. ‘I have learnt nothing new, but so much the better. What possessed me to go hanging on to the edge of another man’s happiness? I regret nothing; I have done what my conscience told me; but now it is over. Let them be! My father was right when he used to say to me: “You and I, my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we’re not the spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs--we are workmen and nothing more. Put on your leather apron, workman, and take your place at your workman’s bench, in your dark workshop, and let the sun shine on other men! Even our dull life has its own pride, its own happiness!”’ The next morning Insarov got a brief note by the post. ‘Expect me,’ Elena wrote to him, ‘and give orders for no one to see you. A. P. will not come.’ XXVIII Insarov read Elena’s note, and at once began to set his room to rights; asked his landlady to take away the medicine-glasses, took off his dressing-gown and put on his coat. His head was swimming and his heart throbbing from weakness and delight. His knees were shaking; he dropped on to the sofa, and began to look at his watch. ‘It’s now a quarter to twelve,’ he said to himself. ‘She can never come before twelve: I will think of something else for a quarter of an hour, or I shall break down altogether. Before twelve she cannot possibly come.’ The door was opened, and in a light silk gown, all pale, all fresh, young and joyful, Elena came in, and with a faint cry of delight she fell on his breast. ‘You are alive, you are mine,’ she repeated, embracing and stroking his head. He was almost swooning, breathless at such closeness, such caresses, such bliss. She sat down near him, holding him fast, and began to gaze at him with that smiling, and caressing, and tender look, only to be seen shining in the eyes of a loving woman. Her face suddenly clouded over. ‘How thin you have grown, my poor Dmitri,’ she said, passing her hand over his neck; ‘what a beard you have.’ ‘And you have grown thin, my poor Elena,’ he answered, catching her fingers with his lips. She shook her curls gaily. ‘That’s nothing. You shall see how soon we’ll be strong again! The storm has blown over, just as it blew over and passed away that day when we met in the chapel. Now we are going to live.’ He answered her with a smile only. ‘Ah, what a time we have had, Dmitri, what a cruel time! How can people outlive those they love? I knew beforehand what Andrei Petrovitch would say to me every day, I did really; my life seemed to ebb and flow with yours. Welcome back, my Dmitri!’ He did not know what to say to her. He was longing to throw himself at her feet.