And all this seemed to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the pleasantest daydreams.

With a resolute feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached home before nine o'clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed the duties of housekeeper in his house.