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I don’t know how I made my way to the familiar little house; I remember I sat down several times by the road to rest, not from fatigue, but from emotion. I went into the passage, and had not yet had time to utter a single word when the door of the drawing-room flew open and Varia ran to meet me. ‘At last,’ she said, in a quavering voice; ‘where’s Andrei Nikolaevitch?’ ‘Kolosov has not come,’ I muttered with an effort. ‘Not come!’ she repeated. ‘Yes … he told me to tell you that … he was detained….’ I positively did not know what I was saying, and I did not dare to raise my eyes. Varia stood silent and motionless before me. I glanced at her: she turned away her head; two big tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. In the expression of her face there was such sudden, bitter suffering; the conflict between bashfulness, sorrow, and confidence in me was so simply, so touchingly apparent in the unconscious movement of her poor little head that it sent a pang to my heart. I bent a little forward … she gave a hurried start and ran away. In the parlour I was met by Ivan Semyonitch. ‘How’s this, my good sir, are you alone?’ he asked me, with a queer twitch of his left eyelid. ‘Yes, I’ve come alone,’ I stammered. Sidorenko went off into a sudden guffaw and departed into the next room.

I had never been in such a foolish position; it was too devilishly disgusting! But there was nothing to be done. I began walking up and down the room. ‘What was the fat pig laughing at?’ I wondered. Matrona Semyonovna came into the room with a stocking in her hands and sat down in the window. I began talking to her. Meanwhile tea was brought in. Varia came downstairs, pale and sorrowful. The retired lieutenant made jokes about Kolosov. ‘I know,’ said he, ‘what sort of customer he is; you couldn’t tempt him here with lollipops now, I expect!’ Varia hurriedly got up and went away. Ivan Semyonitch looked after her and gave a sly whistle. I glanced at him in perplexity. ‘Can it be,’ I wondered, ‘that he knows all about it?’ And the lieutenant, as though divining my thoughts, nodded his head affirmatively. Directly after tea I got up and took leave. ‘You, my good sir, we shall see again,’ observed the lieutenant. I did not say a word in reply…. I began to feel simply frightened of the man.

On the steps a cold and trembling hand clutched at mine; I looked round: Varia. ‘I must speak to you,’ she whispered. ‘Come to-morrow rather earlier, straight into the garden. After dinner papa is asleep; no one will interfere with us.’ I pressed her hand without a word, and we parted.

Next day, at three o’clock in the afternoon, I was in Ivan Semyonitch’s garden. In the morning I had not seen Kolosov, though he had come to see me. It was a grey autumn day, but soft and warm. Delicate yellow blades of grass nodded over the blanching turf; the nimble tomtits were hopping about the bare dark-brown twigs; some belated larks were hurriedly running about the paths; a hare was creeping cautiously about among the greens; a herd of cattle wandered lazily over the stubble. I found Varia in the garden under the apple-tree on the little garden-seat; she was wearing a dark dress, rather creased; her weary eyes, the dejected droop of her hair, seemed to express genuine suffering.

I sat down beside her. We were both silent. For a long while she kept twisting a twig in her hand; she bent her head, and uttered: ‘Andrei Nikolaevitch….’ I noticed at once, by the twitching of her lips, that she was getting ready to cry, and began consoling her, assuring her hotly of Andrei’s devotion…. She heard me, nodded her head mournfully, articulated some indistinct words, and then was silent but did not cry. The first moments I had dreaded most of all had gone off fairly well. She began little by little to talk about Andrei. ‘I know that he does not love me now,’ she repeated: ‘God be with him! I can’t imagine how I am to live without him…. I don’t sleep at nights, I keep weeping…. What am I to do! What am I to do! …’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I thought him so kind … and here …’ Varia wiped her eyes, cleared her throat, and sat up. ‘It seems such a little while ago,’ she went on: ‘he was reading to me out of Pushkin, sitting with me on this bench….’ Varia’s naive communicativeness touched me. I listened in silence to her confessions; my soul was slowly filled with a bitter, torturing bliss; I could not take my eyes off that pale face, those long, wet eyelashes, and half-parted, rather parched lips…. And meanwhile I felt … Would you care to hear a slight psychological analysis of my emotions at that moment? in the first place I was tortured by the thought that it was not I that was loved, not I that as making Varia suffer: secondly, I was delighted at her confidence; I knew she would be grateful to me for giving her an opportunity of expressing her sorrow: thirdly, I was inwardly vowing to myself to bring Kolosov and Varia together again, and was deriving consolation from the consciousness of my magnanimity … in the fourth place, I hoped, by my self-sacrifice, to touch Varia’s heart; and then … You see I do not spare myself; no, thank God! it’s high time!