When Nadya woke up it must have been two o’clock, it was beginning to get light.  A watchman was tapping somewhere far away.  She was not sleepy, and her bed felt very soft and uncomfortable.  Nadya sat up in her bed and fell to thinking as she had done every night in May.  Her thoughts were the same as they had been the night before, useless, persistent thoughts, always alike, of how Andrey Andreitch had begun courting her and had made her an offer, how she had accepted him and then little by little had come to appreciate the kindly, intelligent man.  But for some reason now when there was hardly a month left before the wedding, she began to feel dread and uneasiness as though something vague and oppressive were before her.

“Tick-tock, tick-tock . . .” the watchman tapped lazily. “. . .  Tick-tock.”

Through the big old-fashioned window she could see the garden and at a little distance bushes of lilac in full flower, drowsy and lifeless from the cold; and the thick white mist was floating softly up to the lilac, trying to cover it.  Drowsy rooks were cawing in the far-away trees.

“My God, why is my heart so heavy?”

Perhaps every girl felt the same before her wedding.  There was no knowing!  Or was it Sasha’s influence?  But for several years past Sasha had been repeating the same thing, like a copybook, and when he talked he seemed naive and queer.  But why was it she could not get Sasha out of her head?  Why was it?

The watchman left off tapping for a long while.  The birds were twittering under the windows and the mist had disappeared from the garden.  Everything was lighted up by the spring sunshine as by a smile.  Soon the whole garden, warm and caressed by the sun, returned to life, and dewdrops like diamonds glittered on the leaves and the old neglected garden on that morning looked young and gaily decked.

Granny was already awake.  Sasha’s husky cough began.  Nadya could hear them below, setting the samovar and moving the chairs.  The hours passed slowly, Nadya had been up and walking about the garden for a long while and still the morning dragged on.

At last Nina Ivanovna appeared with a tear-stained face, carrying a glass of mineral water.  She was interested in spiritualism and homeopathy, read a great deal, was fond of talking of the doubts to which she was subject, and to Nadya it seemed as though there were a deep mysterious significance in all that.

Now Nadya kissed her mother and walked beside her.

“What have you been crying about, mother?” she asked.

“Last night I was reading a story in which there is an old man and his daughter.  The old man is in some office and his chief falls in love with his daughter.  I have not finished it, but there was a passage which made it hard to keep from tears,” said Nina Ivanovna and she sipped at her glass.  “I thought of it this morning and shed tears again.”

“I have been so depressed all these days,” said Nadya after a pause.  “Why is it I don’t sleep at night!”