Had anyone asked Migoúrski if he thought it possible that Albína might come to him, he would have said that it was quite out of the question; yet at the bottom of his heart he expected her. The blood rushed to his heart now, and he ran breathless into the hall. There a fat, pockmarked woman was unwrapping a shawl from her head. Another woman was entering the door of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s rooms. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned round. From under the hood, eyes, set far apart and full of the joy of life, beamed beneath their frozen lashes⁠—the eyes of Albína.

He was stupefied, and did not know how to welcome her, or how to greet her.

“Josy!” she cried, giving him the name her father called him by, and by which she thought of him herself⁠—and she threw her arms round his neck, pressing her cold, reddened face to his, and began to laugh and cry.

Having heard who Albína was, and why she had come, the Lieutenant-Colonel’s kindhearted wife received her into her house, and kept her there till the wedding.