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The Lady with the Little Dog

By Anton Chekhov

Level 5-6

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Contents

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
 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 bret; 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 bret, 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 bret 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 nave 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!"

"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.

— THE END –

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