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But from the bell-tower of the monastery near it struck five o’clock; the evening was coming on rapidly. Varia got up hastily, thrust a little note into my hand, and went off towards the house. I overtook her, promised to bring Andrei to her, and stealthily, like a happy lover, crept out by the little gate into the field. On the note was written in an unsteady hand the words: To Andrei Nikolaevitch.

Next day I set off early in the morning to Kolosov’s. I’m bound to confess that, although I assured myself that my intentions were not only honourable, but positively brimful of great-hearted self-sacrifice, I was yet conscious of a certain awkwardness, even timidity. I arrived at Kolosov’s. There was with him a fellow called Puzyritsin, a former student who had never taken his degree, one of those authors of sensational novels of the so-called ‘Moscow’ or ‘grey’ school. Puzyritsin was a very good-natured and shy person, and was always preparing to be an hussar, in spite of his thirty-three years. He belonged to that class of people who feel it absolutely necessary, once in the twenty-four hours, to utter a phrase after the pattern of, ‘The beautiful always falls into decay in the flower of its splendour; such is the fate of the beautiful in the world,’ in order to smoke his pipe with redoubled zest all the rest of the day in a circle of ‘good comrades.’ On this account he was called an idealist. Well, so Puzyritsin was sitting with Kolosov reading him some ‘fragment.’ I began to listen; it was all about a youth, who loves a maiden, kills her, and so on. At last Puzyritsin finished and retreated. His absurd production, solemnly bawling voice, his presence altogether, had put Kolosov into a mood of sarcastic irritability. I felt that I had come at an unlucky moment, but there was nothing to be done for it; without any kind of preface, I handed Andrei Varia’s note.

Kolosov looked at me in perplexity, tore open the note, ran his eyes over it, said nothing, but smiled composedly. ‘Oh, ho!’ he said at last; ‘so you’ve been at Ivan Semyonitch’s?’

‘Yes, I was there yesterday, alone,’ I answered abruptly and resolutely.

‘Ah!…’ observed Kolosov ironically, and he lighted his pipe. ‘Andrei,’ I said to him, ‘aren’t you sorry for her?… If you had seen her tears…’

And I launched into an eloquent description of my visit of the previous day. I was genuinely moved. Kolosov did not speak, and smoked his pipe.

‘You sat with her under the apple-tree in the garden,’ he said at last. ‘I remember in May I, too, used to sit with her on that seat…. The apple-tree was in blossom, the fresh white flowers fell upon us sometimes; I held both Varia’s hands… we were happy then…. Now the apple-blossom is over, and the apples on the tree are sour.’

I flew into a passion of noble indignation, began reproaching Andrei for coldness, for cruelty, argued with him that he had no right to abandon a girl so suddenly, after awakening in her a multitude of new emotions; I begged him at least to go and say good-bye to Varia. Kolosov heard me to the end.

‘Admitting,’ he said to me, when, agitated and exhausted, I flung myself into an armchair, ‘that you, as my friend, may be allowed to criticise me. But hear my defence, at least, though…’

Here he paused for a little while and smiled curiously. ‘Varia’s an excellent girl,’ he went on, ‘and has done me no wrong whatever…. On the contrary, I am greatly, very greatly indebted to her. I have left off going to see her for a very simple reason–I have left off caring for her….’

‘But why? why?’ I interrupted him.

‘Goodness knows why. While I loved her, I was entirely hers; I never thought of the future, and everything, my whole life, I shared with her … now this passion has died out in me…. Well, you would tell me to be a humbug, to play at being in love, wouldn’t you? But what for? from pity for her? If she’s a decent girl, she won’t care for such charity herself, but if she is glad to be consoled by my … my sympathy, well, she’s not good for much!’