My favorite part:
"Wait," he said, sitting down at the table. "There's one thing I've long wanted to ask you."
He looked straight into her tender though frightened eyes.
"Please do."
"Here," he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: "When you answered me: 'that cannot be', did it mean never or then?" There was no likelihood that she would be able to understand this complex phrase, but he watched her with such a look as if his life depended on her understanding these words.
She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her knitted brow on her hand and began to read. Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance: "Is this what I think?"
"I understand," she said, blushing.
"What is this word?" he said, pointing to the n that signified the word never.
"That means the word never," she said, "but it's not true!"
He quickly erased what was written, gave her the chalk and got up. She wrote: t, I, c, g, n, o, a.
...He suddenly beamed: he had understood. It meant: "Then I could give no other answer."
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
"Only then?"
"Yes," her smile replied.
"And n...And now?" he asked.
"Well, here, read this. I'll tell you what I would wish. Would wish very much!" She wrote the initial letters: t, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. It meant,: "that you could forgive and forget what happened."
He seized the chalk with his tense, trembling fingers and, breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following: "I have nothing to forgive and forget, I have never stopped loving you."
She glanced at him, the smile staying on her lips.
"I understand," she said in a whisper.
