“Can it possibly be today?” I asked myself, incredulous of my own happiness. “Is it possible that I shall wake tomorrow, not here but in that strange house with the pillars? Is it possible that I shall never again wait for his coming and meet him, and sit up late with Kátya to talk about him? Shall I never sit with him beside the piano in our drawing room? never see him off and feel uneasy about him on dark nights?” But I remembered that he promised yesterday to pay a last visit, and that Kátya had insisted on my trying on my wedding dress, and had said “For tomorrow.” I believed for a moment that it was all real, and then doubted again. “Can it be that after today I shall be living there with a mother-in-law, without Nadëzhda or old Grigóri or Kátya? Shall I go to bed without kissing my old nurse good night and hearing her say, while she signs me with the cross from old custom, ‘Good night, Miss’? Shall I never again teach Sónya and play with her and knock through the wall to her in the morning and hear her hearty laugh? Shall I become from today someone that I myself do not know? and is a new world, that will realize my hopes and desires, opening before me? and will that new world last forever?” alone with these thoughts I was depressed and impatient for his arrival.