The epigraph is a question: was someone created only to be, even for an instant, in the neighborhood of a heart? These are three lines signed by Turgenev, the only thing that precedes the First Night, and the whole book works as an answer to this question.
In English, the lines say: "Or was he created only for this: / to be, even for an instant, / in the neighborhood of your heart?" They do not promise a life beside someone; they promise an instant, and not within the beloved heart but in its neighborhood. This is exactly what the Dreamer receives: four nights beside a girl who waits for another man, and some hours, on the Fourth Night, in which she accepts his hand.
The last sentence of the book repeats the question in other words: "A whole minute of bliss! Can that be too little, even for a whole human life?" The instant of the epigraph becomes the minute of the Morning, and the neighborhood of the heart becomes the other heart, lonely and grateful, that the Dreamer says he is when he blesses Nastenka.
The two questions admit the same double reading. They can be complaint: only this, an instant, and from outside? They can be consolation: at least this, and that is enough. The narrator, who blesses instead of accusing, tilts the reading toward consolation, but the form of a question keeps both open, and that is how the book ends.