"I . . . came by . . ."
"Maman isn't feeling well, and neither is Aglaya.
Adelaida's going to bed, and so am I.
We spent the whole evening sitting at home alone.
Papa and the prince are in Petersburg."
"I've come . . . I've come to you . . . now . . ."
"Do you know what time it is?"
"N-no . . ."
"Half-past twelve.
We always go to bed at one."
"Ah, I thought it was . . . half-past nine."
"Never mind!" she laughed.
"But why didn't you come earlier?
Maybe we were expecting you."
"I . . . thought. . ." he babbled, going out.
"Good-bye!
Tomorrow I'll make everybody laugh."
He went down the road that skirted the park to his dacha.
His heart was pounding, his thoughts were confused, and everything around him seemed like a dream.
And suddenly, just as earlier, both times when he was awakened by the same vision, so the same vision again appeared before him.
The same woman came out of the park and stood before him, as if she had been waiting for him there.
He shuddered and stopped; she seized his hand and pressed it hard.
"No, this is not a vision!"
And so she finally stood before him face to face, for the first time since their parting; she was saying something to him, but he looked at her silently; his heart overflowed and was wrung with pain.
Oh, never afterwards could he forget this meeting with her, and he always remembered it with the same pain.
She went down on her knees before him right there in the street, as if beside herself; he stepped back in fear, but she tried to catch his hand in order to kiss it, and, just as earlier in his dream, tears glistened now on her long lashes.
"Get up, get up!" he said in a frightened whisper, trying to raise her. "Get up quickly!"
"Are you happy?
Are you?" she kept asking.
"Tell me just one word, are you happy now?
Today, right now?
With her?
What did she say?"
She would not get up, she did not listen to him; she asked hurriedly and was in a hurry to speak, as though she were being pursued.
"I'm leaving tomorrow, as you told me to.
I won't. . . I'm seeing you for the last time, the last!
Now it really is the last time!"
"Calm yourself, get up!" he said in despair.
She peered at him greedily, clutching his hands.
"Farewell!" she said at last, stood up, and quickly walked away from him, almost ran.
The prince saw that Rogozhin was suddenly beside her, took her arm, and led her away.
"Wait, Prince," cried Rogozhin, "in five minutes I'll come back for a bit."
In five minutes he indeed came back; the prince was waiting for him in the same place.
"I put her in the carriage," he said. "It's been waiting there on the corner since ten o'clock.
She just knew you'd spend the whole evening with the other one.
I told her exactly what you wrote me today.
She won't write to the other one anymore; she promised; and she'll leave here tomorrow, as you wished.
She wanted to see you one last time, even though you refused; we waited here in this place for you to go back—over there, on that bench."
"She brought you along herself?"
"And what of it?" Rogozhin grinned. "I saw what I knew.