They rose. I barely managed to leap aside and hide behind a thick linden. They came out of the arbour and, so far as I was able to judge from the sound of their footsteps, went off into the grove. I do not know how long I had been standing there, without stirring from the spot, absorbed in a sort of irrational surprise, when suddenly the sound of footsteps became audible again. I started and peered cautiously from my ambush. Bizmyónkoff and Liza were returning by the same path. Both were greatly agitated, especially Bizmyónkoff. He had been weeping, apparently. Liza halted, gazed at him, and uttered the following words distinctly: "I consent, Bizmyónkoff. I would not have consented, had you merely wished to save me, to extricate me from a frightful position; but you love me, you know all--and you love me; I shall never find a more trustworthy, faithful friend. I will be your wife." Bizmyónkoff kissed her hand; she smiled sadly at him, and went to the house. Bizmyónkoff dashed into the thicket, and I went my way. As Bizmyónkoff had probably said to Liza precisely what I had intended to say to her, and as she had given him precisely the answer which I had hoped to hear from her, there was no necessity for my troubling myself further. A fortnight later she married him. The old Ozhógins were glad to get any bridegroom. Well, tell me now, am not I a superfluous man? Did not I play in the whole of that affair the part of a superfluous man? The rôle of the Prince .... as to that, there is nothing to be said; the rôle of Bizmyónkoff also is comprehensible .... But I? Why was I mixed up in it?... what a stupid, fifth wheel to the cart I was!... Akh, 't is bitter, bitter!... So now, as the stevedores on the Volga say: "Heave-ho! heave-ho!"[15]--one more little day, then another, and nothing will be either bitter or sweet to me any more. March 31. Things are bad. I write these lines in bed. The weather has changed suddenly since yesterday. To-day is hot--almost a summer day. Everything is thawing, crumbling, and streaming. There is an odour of ploughed earth in the air: a heavy, powerful, oppressive odour. The steam is rising everywhere. The sun is fairly beating, fairly blazing down. I am in a bad way. I feel that I am decomposing. I started out to write a diary, and instead of that, what have I done? I have narrated one incident out of my own life. I have been babbling, sleeping memories have waked up and carried me away. I have written leisurely, in detail, as though I still had years before me; and now, lo, there is no time to continue. Death, death is advancing. I can already hear its menacing crescendo... Time 's up.... Time 's up!...