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The lady with the Dog . Anton Chekhov


THE LADY WITH THE DOG


I

IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with
a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight
at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest
in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the
sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a _béret_;
a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.

And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square
several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same
_béret_, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was,
and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."

"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss
to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.

He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and
two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in
his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She
was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as
she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic
spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly
considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and
did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long
ago--had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account,
almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his
presence, used to call them "the lower race."

It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that
he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two
days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was
bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but
when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say
to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was
silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there
was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed
them in his favour; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him,
too, to them.

Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long
ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people--always slow to
move and irresolute--every intimacy, which at first so agreeably
diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably
grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run
the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an
interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and
he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.

One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the _béret_
came up slowly to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her
dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a lady, that
she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and
that she was dull there.... The stories told of the immorality in such
places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew
that such stories were for the most part made up by persons who would
themselves have been glad to sin if they had been able; but when the
lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered
these tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the
tempting thought of a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance with an
unknown woman, whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of
him.

He beckoned coaxingly to the Pomeranian, and when the dog came up to him
he shook his finger at it. The Pomeranian growled: Gurov shook his
finger at it again.

The lady looked at him and at once dropped her eyes.

"He doesn't bite," she said, and blushed.

"May I give him a bone?" he asked; and when she nodded he asked
courteously, "Have you been long in Yalta?"

"Five days."

"And I have already dragged out a fortnight here."

There was a brief silence.

"Time goes fast, and yet it is so dull here!" she said, not looking at
him.

"That's only the fashion to say it is dull here. A provincial will live
in Belyov or Zhidra and not be dull, and when he comes here it's 'Oh,
the dulness! Oh, the dust!' One would think he came from Grenada."

She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but
after dinner they walked side by side; and there sprang up between them
the light jesting conversation of people who are free and satisfied, to
whom it does not matter where they go or what they talk about. They
walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was of a
soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon
it. They talked of how sultry it was after a hot day. Gurov told her
that he came from Moscow, that he had taken his degree in Arts, but had
a post in a bank; that he had trained as an opera-singer, but had given
it up, that he owned two houses in Moscow.... And from her he learnt
that she had grown up in Petersburg, but had lived in S---- since her
marriage two years before, that she was staying another month in Yalta,
and that her husband, who needed a holiday too, might perhaps come and
fetch her. She was not sure whether her husband had a post in a Crown
Department or under the Provincial Council--and was amused by her own
ignorance. And Gurov learnt, too, that she was called Anna Sergeyevna.

Afterwards he thought about her in his room at the hotel--thought she
would certainly meet him next day; it would be sure to happen. As he got
into bed he thought how lately she had been a girl at school, doing
lessons like his own daughter; he recalled the diffidence, the
angularity, that was still manifest in her laugh and her manner of
talking with a stranger. This must have been the first time in her life
she had been alone in surroundings in which she was followed, looked at,
and spoken to merely from a secret motive which she could hardly fail to
guess. He recalled her slender, delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes.

"There's something pathetic about her, anyway," he thought, and fell
asleep.


II

A week had passed since they had made acquaintance. It was a holiday. It
was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust round
and round, and blew people's hats off. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov
often went into the pavilion, and pressed Anna Sergeyevna to have syrup
and water or an ice. One did not know what to do with oneself.

In the evening when the wind had dropped a little, they went out on the
groyne to see the steamer come in. There were a great many people
walking about the harbour; they had gathered to welcome some one,
bringing bouquets. And two peculiarities of a well-dressed Yalta crowd
were very conspicuous: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones,
and there were great numbers of generals.

Owing to the roughness of the sea, the steamer arrived late, after the
sun had set, and it was a long time turning about before it reached the
groyne. Anna Sergeyevna looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and
the passengers as though looking for acquaintances, and when she turned
to Gurov her eyes were shining. She talked a great deal and asked
disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then
she dropped her lorgnette in the crush.

The festive crowd began to disperse; it was too dark to see people's
faces. The wind had completely dropped, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna
still stood as though waiting to see some one else come from the
steamer. Anna Sergeyevna was silent now, and sniffed the flowers without
looking at Gurov.

"The weather is better this evening," he said. "Where shall we go now?
Shall we drive somewhere?"

She made no answer.

Then he looked at her intently, and all at once put his arm round her
and kissed her on the lips, and breathed in the moisture and the
fragrance of the flowers; and he immediately looked round him, anxiously
wondering whether any one had seen them.

"Let us go to your hotel," he said softly. And both walked quickly.

The room was close and smelt of the scent she had bought at the Japanese
shop. Gurov looked at her and thought: "What different people one meets
in the world!" From the past he preserved memories of careless,
good-natured women, who loved cheerfully and were grateful to him for
the happiness he gave them, however brief it might be; and of women like
his wife who loved without any genuine feeling, with superfluous
phrases, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that suggested
that it was not love nor passion, but something more significant; and of
two or three others, very beautiful, cold women, on whose faces he had
caught a glimpse of a rapacious expression--an obstinate desire to
snatch from life more than it could give, and these were capricious,
unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent women not in their first youth,
and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty excited his hatred, and
the lace on their linen seemed to him like scales.

But in this case there was still the diffidence, the angularity of
inexperienced youth, an awkward feeling; and there was a sense of
consternation as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. The
attitude of Anna Sergeyevna--"the lady with the dog"--to what had
happened was somehow peculiar, very grave, as though it were her
fall--so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her face
dropped and faded, and on both sides of it her long hair hung down
mournfully; she mused in a dejected attitude like "the woman who was a
sinner" in an old-fashioned picture.

"It's wrong," she said. "You will be the first to despise me now."

There was a water-melon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and
began eating it without haste. There followed at least half an hour of
silence.

Anna Sergeyevna was touching; there was about her the purity of a good,
simple woman who had seen little of life. The solitary candle burning on
the table threw a faint light on her face, yet it was clear that she was
very unhappy.

"How could I despise you?" asked Gurov. "You don't know what you are
saying."

"God forgive me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It's
awful."

"You seem to feel you need to be forgiven."

"Forgiven? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and don't attempt
to justify myself. It's not my husband but myself I have deceived. And
not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time. My
husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey! I don't know
what he does there, what his work is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was
twenty when I was married to him. I have been tormented by curiosity; I
wanted something better. 'There must be a different sort of life,' I
said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live!... I was fired by
curiosity ... you don't understand it, but, I swear to God, I could not
control myself; something happened to me: I could not be restrained. I
told my husband I was ill, and came here.... And here I have been
walking about as though I were dazed, like a mad creature; ... and now I
have become a vulgar, contemptible woman whom any one may despise."

Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the
naïve tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the
tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a
part.

"I don't understand," he said softly. "What is it you want?"

She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.

"Believe me, believe me, I beseech you ..." she said. "I love a pure,
honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I am doing.
Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I may say of
myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me."

"Hush, hush!..." he muttered.

He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and
affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety
returned; they both began laughing.

Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the sea-front. The
town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still
broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and
a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.

They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.

"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the
board--Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is your husband a German?"

"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox
Russian himself."

At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at
the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning
mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did
not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow
sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the
eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no
Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as
indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this
constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each
of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of
the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards
perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so
lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings--the sea,
mountains, clouds, the open sky--Gurov thought how in reality everything
is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we
think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher
aims of our existence.

A man walked up to them--probably a keeper--looked at them and walked
away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too. They saw a
steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the glow of dawn.

"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergeyevna, after a silence.

"Yes. It's time to go home."

They went back to the town.

Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the sea-front, lunched and
dined together, went for walks, admired the sea. She complained that she
slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same
questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not
respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or gardens, when there
was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her
passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he
looked round in dread of some one's seeing them, the heat, the smell of
the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle,
well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna
Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how fascinating. He was impatiently
passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while she was often
pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did not respect
her, did not love her in the least, and thought of her as nothing but a
common woman. Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere out
of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the expedition was always a
success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful.

They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him,
saying that there was something wrong with his eyes, and he entreated
his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made haste
to go.

"It's a good thing I am going away," she said to Gurov. "It's the finger
of destiny!"

She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole day.
When she had got into a compartment of the express, and when the second
bell had rung, she said:

"Let me look at you once more ... look at you once again. That's right."

She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face
was quivering.

"I shall remember you ... think of you," she said. "God be with you; be
happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting forever--it must
be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you."

The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a
minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had
conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium,
that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark
distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum
of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And
he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in
his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a
memory.... He was moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse. This
young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him;
he was genuinely warm and affectionate with her, but yet in his manner,
his tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the
coarse condescension of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her
age. All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously
he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had
unintentionally deceived her....

Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold
evening.

"It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform.
"High time!"


III

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were
heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were
having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light
the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first
snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to
see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath,
and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and
birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are
nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one
doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.

Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and
when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka,
and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his
recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by
little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers
a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He
already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties,
anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining
distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor
at the doctors' club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish
and cabbage.

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be
shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit
him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a
month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in
his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day
before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the
evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children,
preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at
the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything
would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the
early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming
from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his
room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into
dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come.
Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about
everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw
her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him
lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer
than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from
the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner--he heard her
breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched
the women, looking for some one like her.

He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some
one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had
no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the
bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there
been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in
his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to
talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only
his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:

"The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri."

One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with whom
he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:

"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in
Yalta!"

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned
suddenly and shouted:

"Dmitri Dmitritch!"

"What?"

"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!"

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation,
and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what
people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The
rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk
always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always
about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better
part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling
and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or
getting away from it--just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he
had a headache all next day. And the next night he slept badly; he sat
up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his
children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk
of anything.

In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife
he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young
friend--and he set off for S----. What for? He did not very well know
himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her--to
arrange a meeting, if possible.

He reached S---- in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in
which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was
an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with
its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him
the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in
Old Gontcharny Street--it was not far from the hotel: he was rich and
lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew
him. The porter pronounced the name "Dridirits."

Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house.
Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.

"One would run away from a fence like that," thought Gurov, looking from
the fence to the windows of the house and back again.

He considered: to-day was a holiday, and the husband would probably be
at home. And in any case it would be tactless to go into the house and
upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her
husband's hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was
to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and down the street by the
fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and
dogs fly at him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds
were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing. The
front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the
familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog,
but his heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could
not remember the dog's name.

He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by
now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was
perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was
very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning
till night but that confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and
sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to do, then he had
dinner and a long nap.

"How stupid and worrying it is!" he thought when he woke and looked at
the dark windows: it was already evening. "Here I've had a good sleep
for some reason. What shall I do in the night?"

He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as
one sees in hospitals, and he taunted himself in his vexation:

"So much for the lady with the dog ... so much for the adventure....
You're in a nice fix...."

That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his
eye. "The Geisha" was to be performed for the first time. He thought of
this and went to the theatre.

"It's quite possible she may go to the first performance," he thought.

The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog
above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front
row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the
performance, with their hands behind them; in the Governor's box the
Governor's daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in the front seat, while
the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his
hands visible; the orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage
curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and taking
their seats Gurov looked at them eagerly.

Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when
Gurov looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that
for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious,
and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable,
lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled
his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that
he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra,
of the wretched provincial violins, he thought how lovely she was. He
thought and dreamed.

A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with
Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step
and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the husband
whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey.
And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the
small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey's obsequiousness;
his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of
distinction like the number on a waiter.

During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained
alone in her stall. Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up
to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:

"Good-evening."

She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror,
unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the
lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint.
Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her
confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the
flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though
all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went
quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along
passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and
civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes.
They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the
draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov,
whose heart was beating violently, thought:

"Oh, heavens! Why are these people here and this orchestra!..."

And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off
at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would
never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written "To the
Amphitheatre," she stopped.

"How you have frightened me!" she said, breathing hard, still pale and
overwhelmed. "Oh, how you have frightened me! I am half dead. Why have
you come? Why?"

"But do understand, Anna, do understand ..." he said hastily in a low
voice. "I entreat you to understand...."

She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at
him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.

"I am so unhappy," she went on, not heeding him. "I have thought of
nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you. And I
wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?"

On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down,
but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began
kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.

"What are you doing, what are you doing!" she cried in horror, pushing
him away. "We are mad. Go away to-day; go away at once.... I beseech you
by all that is sacred, I implore you.... There are people coming this
way!"

Some one was coming up the stairs.

"You must go away," Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear,
Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been
happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy, never!
Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to Moscow. But now
let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!"

She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round
at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy.
Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died
away, he found his coat and left the theatre.


IV

And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or
three months she left S----, telling her husband that she was going to
consult a doctor about an internal complaint--and her husband believed
her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky
Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went
to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.

Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the
messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him walked
his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way. Snow
was falling in big wet flakes.

"It's three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing," said
Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth;
there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the
atmosphere."

"And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?"

He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was
going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never
would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared
to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like
the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its
course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental,
conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest
and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not
deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden
from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he
hid himself to conceal the truth--such, for instance, as his work in the
bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with
his wife at anniversary festivities--all that was open. And he judged of
others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing
that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of
secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on
secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man
was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky
Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly
knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress,
exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since
the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did not smile,
and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was
slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.

"Well, how are you getting on there?" he asked. "What news?"

"Wait; I'll tell you directly.... I can't talk."

She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and
pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

"Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he
sat down in an arm-chair.

Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his
tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She was
crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life
was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves
from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?

"Come, do stop!" he said.

It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over,
that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and more
attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her
that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not have
believed it!

He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something
affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the
looking-glass.

His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to
him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few
years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering.
He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably
already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did
she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he
was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their
imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and
afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the
same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had
made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once
loved; it was anything you like, but not love.

And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in
love--for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin,
like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate
itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why
he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair
of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They
forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they
forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had
changed them both.

In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any
arguments that came into his mind, but now he no longer cared for
arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and
tender....

"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You've had your cry; that's
enough.... Let us talk now, let us think of some plan."

Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to
avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different
towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be
free from this intolerable bondage?

"How? How?" he asked, clutching his head. "How?"

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found,
and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both
of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the
most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.