We were drunk with our unutterable happiness, and I said to Olga:
"May the Lord strike me dead, Olga, if on account of me you should weep other tears."
But she said to me:
"I will bear everything from you. I will be your mother and your sister, my lonely one."
[CHAPTER VI]
We lived together in a dream. I worked automatically, saw nothing and did not wish to see anything. I hurried home to my wife and walked with her in the fields and in the woods.
My past came back to me. I caught birds and our home became light and airy with the cages which were hung on the walls and the singing of the birds. My gentle wife loved them, and when I came home she told me how the tomtit behaved and how the client-finch sang.
In the evening I read Minea or the Prologue, but more often I spoke to my wife of my childhood and of Larion and Savelko; how they sang songs to the Lord and how they talked about Him. I told her about crazy old Vlassi, who was dead by this time. I told her everything that I knew, and it seemed that I knew very much about man and birds and fish. I cannot describe my happiness in words, for a man who has never known happiness and only enjoys it for a little time, never can describe it.
We went together to church and stood next to each other in a corner and prayed in unison. I offered prayers of thanks to God in order to praise Him, though not without secret pride, for it seemed to me that I had conquered God's might and forced Him, against His will, to make me happy. He had given in to me and I praised Him for it: