“We went into the house. The rooms were smallish and had low ceilings, and the furniture was typical of the summer villa (Russians like having at their summer villas uncomfortable heavy, dingy furniture which they are sorry to throw away and have nowhere to put), but from certain details I could observe that Kisotchka and her husband were not badly off, and must be spending five or six thousand roubles a year. I remember that in the middle of the room which Kisotchka called the dining-room there was a round table, supported for some reason on six legs, and on it a samovar and cups. At the edge of the table lay an open book, a pencil, and an exercise book. I glanced at the book and recognised it as ‘Malinin and Burenin’s Arithmetical Examples.’ It was open, as I now remember, at the ‘Rules of Compound Interest.’

“‘To whom are you giving lessons?’ I asked Kisotchka.’

“‘Nobody,’ she answered. ‘I am just doing some.…I have nothing to do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and do sums.’

“‘Have you any children?’

“‘I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week.’

“We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how good it was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success. And the more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, the stronger was my conviction that I should go away without having gained my object. I was a connoisseur in love affairs in those days, and could accurately gauge my chances of success. You can boldly reckon on success if you are tracking down a fool or a woman as much on the look out for new experiences and sensations as yourself, or an adventuress to whom you are a stranger. If you come across a sensible and serious woman, whose face has an expression of weary submission and goodwill, who is genuinely delighted at your presence, and, above all, respects you, you may as well turn back. To succeed in that case needs longer than one day.

“And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than by day. She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked me too, and the surroundings were most appropriate: the husband not at home, no servants visible, stillness around.…Thought I had little confidence in success, I made up my mind to begin the attack anyway. First of all it was necessary to get into a familiar tone and to change Kisotchka’s lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolous one.

“ ‘Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna,’ I began. ‘Let us talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for the sake of old times, to call you Kisotchka.’

“She allowed me.

“ ‘Tell me, please, Kisotchka,’ I went on, ‘what is the matter with all the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old days they were all so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one asks about anyone, one is told such things that one is quite shocked at human nature.…One Young lady has eloped with an officer; another has run away and carried off a high-school boy with her; another—a married woman—has run away from her husband with an actor; a fourth has left her husband and gone off with an officer, and so on and so on. It’s a regular epidemic! If it goes on like this there won’t be a girl or a young woman left in your town!’

“I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed in response I should have gone on in this style: ‘You had better look out, Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!’ She would have dropped her eyes and said: ‘As though anyone would care to carry me off; there are plenty younger and better looking.…’And I should have said: ‘Nonsense, Kisotchka—I for one should be delighted!’ And so on in that style, and it would all have gone swimmingly. But Kisotchka did not laugh in response; on the contrary, she looked grave and sighed.