suddenly; he seemed to vanish.

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