"Well, we have spent a bad night, have we not? I understand that; I was young myself once."

I made no answer; I understood nothing; I did not believe that I saw him before my face. Meanwhile he shook my hands, forced me to sit down, and, seating himself in front of me, continued,--

"Recover yourself; be calm; let us talk like honest people. My dear sir, do you think that you are the only person who lay awake? We have not slept either. As soon as we recovered a little after you left us, we felt badly enough to be beyond help. We did indeed! When something is sprung on a man suddenly, he loses his head and then passes the measure.

We were grieved, and, to tell the truth, ashamed. The child rushed off to her chamber; and the old people, like old people, fell to throwing the blame on each other. Thou art at fault, woman! thou art at fault, man! said we to each other. Such is human nature. But later came reflection and regret. He is young, honorable, capable; he loves our child with his whole heart, it seems; why in God's name were we so stubborn? One thing will explain our feelings. Should you ever be a father, you will understand this, that in parents' eyes nothing is enough for their child. Still it occurred to us that that which seemed little to us might satisfy Tola, so we made up our minds that it was better to inquire what the girl had in her heart, and we called her to counsel. The third counsellor was a good one! there is no denying that.

When she fell to embracing our feet, and put her dear head on our knees, in this way-- Well, you know parents' hearts--"

Here he was moved himself, and for a time we sat in silence. Everything that I heard seemed to me a dream, a fairy tale, a miracle; my suffering began to change into hope. Tola's father mastered his emotion, and continued,--

"Indeed, thou hast piled mountains on us, but we are people of good will, though quick-tempered; and, in proof of this, I will say that if thou prefer Tola to thy feeling of offence--come--"

And he opened his arms to me. I fell into them, half conscious, half bewildered, happy. I felt that my throat was contracting, that I was fit only to burst into sobbing. I wanted absolutely to say something, but could not. I had in my soul one scream of delight, astonishment, and gratitude. All this had fallen on me at once, like a thunderbolt; neither my head nor my heart could take it in, and I felt pain almost from that excess of change, that excess of thoughts and feelings. Tola's father removed my hands gently from his shoulders, and, kissing me on the forehead, said,--

"That is well now, well! I expected this of thee after thy attachment to her. Forget what has happened, and compose thyself."

Seeing, however, that I could not regain self-control, or master my emotion, he began to scold me good-naturedly,--

"Be a man; control thyself! Thou art trembling as in a fever! Well, but that little boy has struck in deeply under thy rib."

"Oi, deeply!" whispered I, with an effort.

The father smiled and said,--

"Is it possible? but he seemed like still water."

Evidently my immense love for Tola pleased his parental pride, for he was glad, and smiling he repeated continually,--

"That's a tick! that's a tick!"

I felt then that if we remained a quarter of an hour longer in the room something in my head would give way. Under ordinary conditions I can command myself, but this time the transition was too great. I needed to breathe fresh air, to see the movement on the streets; above all, I needed to see Tola, and convince myself that she was really existing, that all this was not a dream, and that they were giving her to me really.

I asked Tola's father then to go to his house with me; he consented with gladness.

"I wished to propose that myself," said he; "for surely some little nose there is flattening itself against a window-pane, and eyes are looking into the street. Thou art not in a condition now to discuss serious matters; we will do that hereafter."

A few moments later we were on the street. At first I looked at people, houses, carriages, as a man who has come out for the first time after a long illness, and feels dizziness of the head. Gradually, however, movement and fresh air restored me. Above all thoughts one was dominant: "Tola loves thee; in a moment thou wilt see her!" I felt a throbbing in my temples as mighty as hammer strokes, and really a good hoop was needed round my head to contain it. An hour before I had thought that I should never see Tola again in life, or should see her sometime in some place the wife of another. And now I was going to her to tell her that she would be mine; and I was going because she had stretched out her hand first. Yesterday I called her a senseless doll, and still she had thrown herself at the feet of her parents, imploring for both of us. My heart was overflowing with sorrow, repentance, tenderness, and a feeling that I was unworthy of Tola; I swore to myself to reward her for this, to pay with attachment and boundless devotion for each tear of hers shed yesterday.

Others grew blind in love; I had no need to grow blind, for deeds were pleading for Tola. She had wrought this miracle. I had done her injustice. I had done her parents injustice as well. Had they been such as I had thought them, they would not have let themselves be persuaded.

They would not have reached that simplicity, not merely human, but angelic, with which her father came to me and said: "We were mistaken; take her!" Neither society ceremonial nor vanity had the power to restrain him from this.

I remembered his words: "Indeed, thou didst pile mountains on us, but we are people of good will, though quick-tempered." That simplicity crushed me the more, the greater the mountains which I had piled on them yesterday. Not a word beyond these, no lofty phrases, a playful smile,--that was all. When I thought of this I could not restrain myself longer; I seized his hand, and raised it with reverence to my lips.

He smiled again with that kindly clear smile, and said,--

"My wife and I have said this long time that our son-in-law must love us."

And it happened as they wished, for before I was their son-in-law I loved them as if I had been their own son.

As I was walking very fast, Tola's father began to jest; he puffed, and pretended to be suffering, said that he could not keep pace with me, complained of the heat. In fact, the winter had broken the day before.

A warm breeze wrinkled the water in the city garden, and in the air there was a species of revival, a kind of spring power. At last we were in front of the house. Something vanished from the window and disappeared in the depth of the room; I was not sure that it was Tola.

On the steps my heart began to throb again. I feared the mother. When we had passed the dining-hall we found her in the drawing-room. As I entered, she approached me quickly and reached out her hand, which I kissed reverentially and with gratitude, stammering meanwhile,--

"How have I deserved this?"

"Forgive us yesterday's refusal," said she. "We had not thought of this, that Tola could find no greater attachment in the whole world."

"She could not! She could not!" cried I, with ardor.

"And since the happiness of our child is for us beyond everything, we give her to you, and I can only say: God grant you both happiness!"

She pressed my temples then; after that she turned toward the door and called,--

"Tola!"

And my love came in, pale, with reddened eyes, with bits of hair dropping on her forehead, confused, moved just as I was. How it was that nothing in her escaped my attention, I know not. I only know this, I saw tears gathering under her eyelids, her quivering lips, delight breaking through the tears, and a smile under the confusion. She stood for a moment with arms hanging, as if at a loss what to do; then her father, whom, as was evident, humor never deserted, said, shrugging his shoulders,--

"Ha! a hard case to cure! he has grown stubborn, and will not have thee."

She looked at me quickly, threw herself on her father's neck, and called, as if in an outburst,--

"I do not believe it; I do not believe it!"

If I had followed my heart's first impulse, I should have fallen at her feet. I did not do that simply through lack of courage, and because I had lost my head. I had just presence of mind enough to repeat in any soul, "Do not roar out, thou ass!" The honest father came again to our rescue; freeing himself from Tola's embrace, he said, as if angry with her,--

"If thou dost not believe me, then go to him."

And he pushed her toward me. Heaven opened before me at that moment. I seized her hands. I kissed them with delight, and I know not myself how long it was before I could take my lips from them. More than once I had imagined myself kissing her hands, but it is not for imagination to measure itself with reality! My love, so far, had been like a plant shut up in darkness. Now it was carried suddenly into bright air to luxuriate in warmth and in sunlight, hence the measure of my happiness was filled.

I drank openly from the source of good and delight. To love and imprison that love in thyself, to love and feel that thou art entering on thy right to love and take possession,--are things entirely different. I not only had not had, but I could not have had, any comprehension of this.

The parents blessed us, and went out on purpose to leave us alone, so that we might tell each other all that we felt. But at first, instead of speaking, I only looked at her with ravishment, and her face changed beneath my gaze. Blushes covered her cheeks; the corners of her mouth quivered with a smile full of timidity and embarrassment; her eyes were mist-covered; her head sank, as it were, between her shoulders; at moments she dropped her eyelids and seemed to wait for my words.

At last, we sat down side by side at the window, each holding the other's hand. Till that day she had been for me, not of flesh and blood, as it were, but an abstraction, a beloved spirit, a precious name, an admired charm rather than a person; when her arm touched mine, however, and I felt the warmth of her face, I could not resist a certain astonishment that she was so real. A beloved woman seems known but not felt till one is near her. Now I looked with as much wonder at her face, her mouth, her eyes, her bright hair, and her still brighter eyelashes, as if I had never seen her till that moment. I was carried away by her.

Never had a face so satisfied all my dreams of woman's beauty; no one had ever attracted me so irresistibly as she. And when I thought that all those treasures would be mine, that they belonged to me already, and were my highest good, the whole world whirled around with me.

At last I spoke. I told her feverishly how I had loved her from almost the very first moment, a year and a half before, in Velichka, where I met her by chance in a large society, to me unknown, and where she had grown faint at the bottom of the salt mine; and I ran to the well for water. The next day I paid a visit to her parents; from that visit I came away in love completely.

All this, as I supposed, was perfectly known to her; but she listened with the greatest delight, blushing, and sometimes even asking questions in a low voice. I spoke a long time, and toward the end less stupidly than I had expected. I told how afterward she had been my only strength; how deeply and dreadfully unhappy I was yesterday when I said to myself that all was lost, and that I had lost faith in her also.

"I was just as unhappy," said she. "And it is true that at first I could not stammer out a word, but later I tried to correct everything."

After a while we were both silent. In me there was a struggle between timidity and a wish to kiss her feet; at last, in the most monstrously awkward way possible, and worthy of the last of idiots, I asked her if she loved me even a little.

She strove for a time to give me an answer, but, unable to bring herself to it, she rose and left the room.

She returned quickly with an album in her hand; she sat again at my side and showed me a drawing, my own portrait.

"I sketched this," said she, "from memory."

"Is it possible?"