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Chapter 6 - Continued chapter 2

A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors it was

stifling, and in the streets the dust whirled along. All day

long he was plagued with thirst and he came into the

pavilion every few minutes and offered Anna Sergueyevna

an iced drink or an ice. It was impossibly hot.

In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked to

the jetty to see the steamer come in. There was quite a

crowd all gathered to meet somebody, for they carried

bouquets. And among them were clearly marked the

peculiarities of Talta: the elderly ladies were youngly

dressed and there were many generals.

The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and before it

turned into the jetty it had to do a great deal of

manoeuvring. Anna Sergueyevna looked through her

lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though she

were looking for friends, and when she turned to Gomov,

her eyes shone. She talked much and her questions were

abrupt, and she forgot what she had said; and then she lost

her lorgnette in the crowd.

The well-dressed people went away, the wind dropped,

and Gomov and Anna Sergueyevna stood as though they

were waiting for somebody to come from the steamer.

Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She smelled her flowers and

did not look at Gomov.

"The weather has got pleasanter toward evening," he said.

"Where shall we go now? Shall we take a carriage?"

She did not answer.

He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her and

kissed her lips, and he was kindled with the perfume and

the moisture of the flowers; at once he started and looked

round; had not some one seen? Let us go to your--" he murmured.

And they walked quickly away.

Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which she

had bought at the Japanese shop. Gomov looked at her and

thought: "What strange chances there are in life!" From the

past there came the memory of earlier good-natured

women, gay in their love, grateful to him for their

happiness, short though it might be; and of others--like his

wife--who loved without sincerity, and talked overmuch

and affectedly, hysterically, as though they were protesting

that it was not love, nor passion, but something more

important; and of the few beautiful cold women, into

whose eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression,

a stubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more than it

can give; they were no longer in their first youth, they

were capricious, unstable, domineering, imprudent, and

when Gomov became cold toward them then their beauty

roused him to hatred, and the lace on their lingerie

reminded him of the scales of fish.

But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of

inexperienced youth, a feeling of constraint; an impression

of perplexity and wonder, as though some one had

suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, "the

lady with the toy dog" took what had happened somehow

seriously, with a particular gravity, as though thinking that

this was her downfall and very strange and improper. Her

features seemed to sink and wither, and on either side of

her face her long hair hung mournfully down; she sat

crestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin

in some old picture.

"It is not right," she said. "You are the first to lose respect

for me."

There was a melon on the table. Gomov cut a slice and

began to eat it slowly. At least half an hour passed in

silence.

Anna Sergueyevna was very touching; she irradiated the

purity of a simple, devout, inexperienced woman; the

solitary candle on the table hardly lighted her face, but it

showed her very wretched.

"Why should I cease to respect you?" asked Gomov. "You

don't know what you are saying."

"God forgive me!" she said, and her eyes filled with tears.

"It is horrible."

"You seem to want to justify yourself."

"How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low woman and

I despise myself. I have no thought of justifying myself. It

is not my husband that I have deceived, but myself. And

not only now but for a long time past. My husband may be

a good honest man, but he is a lackey. I do not know what work he does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul.

I was twenty when I married him. I was overcome by

curiosity. I longed for something. 'Surely,' I said to myself,

'there is another kind of life.' I longed to live! To live, and

to live.... Curiosity burned me up.... You do not understand

it, but I swear by God, I could no longer control myself.

Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold

myself in. I told my husband that I was ill and came here....

And here I have been walking about dizzily, like a

lunatic.... And now I have become a low, filthy woman

whom everybody may despise."

Gomov was already bored; her simple words irritated him

with their unexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for

the tears in her eyes he might have thought her to be joking

or playing a part.

"I do not understand," he said quietly. "What do you

want?"

She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him.

"Believe, believe me, I implore you," she said. "I love a

pure, honest life, and sin is revolting to me. I don't know

myself what I am doing. Simple people say: 'The devil

entrapped me,' and I can say of myself: 'The Evil One

tempted me.'"

"Don't, don't," he murmured.

He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her,

spoke quietly and tenderly, and gradually quieted her and

she was happy again, and they both began to laugh.

Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the

quay; the town with its cypresses looked like a city of the

dead, but the sea still roared and broke against the shore; a

boat swung on the waves; and in it sleepily twinkled the

light of a lantern.

They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.

"Just now in the hall," said Gomov, "I discovered your

name written on the board--von Didenitz. Is your husband

a German?"

"No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he

himself is an Orthodox Russian."

At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church,

looked down at the sea and were silent. Talta was hardly

visible through the morning mist. The tops of the hills

were shrouded in motionless white clouds. The leaves of

the trees never stirred, the cicadas trilled, and the

monotonous dull sound of the sea, coming up from below,

spoke of the rest, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So the sea

roared when there was neither Talta nor Oreanda, and so it

roars and will roar, dully, indifferently when we shall be

no more. And in this continual indifference to the life and

death of each of us, lives pent up, the pledge of our eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of life on earth

and its unceasing perfection. Sitting side by side with a

young woman, who in the dawn seemed so beautiful,

Gomov, appeased and enchanted by the sight of the fairy

scene, the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide sky,

thought how at bottom, if it were thoroughly explored,

everything on earth was beautiful, everything, except what

we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher

purposes of life and our own human dignity.

A man came up--a coast-guard--gave a look at them, then

went away. He, too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. A

steamer came over from Feodossia, by the light of the

morning star, its own lights already put out.

"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergueyevna after a

silence.

"Yes. It is time to go home."

They returned to the town.

Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched

together, dined, walked, enjoyed the sea. She complained

that she slept badly, that her heart beat alarmingly. She

would ask the same question over and over again, and was

troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not

sufficiently respect her. And often in the square or the

gardens, when there was no one near, he would draw her

close and kiss her passionately. Their complete idleness,

these kisses in the full daylight, given timidly and fearfully

lest any one should see, the heat, the smell of the sea and

the continual brilliant parade of leisured, well-dressed,

well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would tell

Anna Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting.

He was impatiently passionate, never left her side, and she

would often brood, and even asked him to confess that he

did not respect her, did not love her at all, and only saw in

her a loose woman. Almost every evening, rather late, they

would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the

waterfall; and these drives were always delightful, and the

impressions won during them were always beautiful and

sublime.

They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in

which he said that his eyes were bad and implored his wife

to come home. Anna Sergueyevna began to worry.

"It is a good thing I am going away," she would say to

Gomov. "It is fate."

She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They

drove for a whole day. When she took her seat in the car of

an express-train and when the second bell sounded, she

said:

"Let me have another look at you.... Just one more look.

Just as you are." She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips

trembled.

"I will think of you--often," she said. "Good-bye. Good￾bye. Don't think ill of me. We part for ever. We must,

because we ought not to have met at all. Now, good-bye."

The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in

a minute or two the sound of it was lost, as though

everything were agreed to put an end to this sweet,

oblivious madness. Left alone on the platform, looking

into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the

grasshoppers and the humming of the telegraph-wires, and

felt as though he had just woke up. And he thought that it

had been one more adventure, one more affair, and it also

was finished and had left only a memory. He was moved,

sad, and filled with a faint remorse; surely the young

woman, whom he would never see again, had not been

happy with him; he had been kind to her, friendly, and

sincere, but still in his attitude toward her, in his tone and

caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of raillery,

the rather rough arrogance of the successful male

aggravated by the fact that he was twice as old as she. And

all the time she had called him kind, remarkable, noble, so

that he was never really himself to her, and had

involuntarily deceived her....

Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and

the evening was cool.

"It is time for me to go North," thought Gomov, as he left

the platform. "It is time."