is own account, though I can't say that for certain, as I
have not up to now succeeded in analysing my feelings at that time.
He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, genuine man, and not a bore,
but I remember that when he confided to me his most treasured secrets
and spoke of our relation to each other as friendship, it disturbed
me unpleasantly, and I was conscious of awkwardness. In his affection
for me there was something inappropriate, tiresome, and I should
have greatly preferred commonplace friendly relations.

The fact is that I was extremely attracted by his wife, Marya
Sergeyevna. I was not in love with her, but I was attracted by her
face, her eyes, her voice, her walk. I missed her when I did not
see her for a long time, and my imagination pictured no one at that
time so eagerly as that young, beautiful, elegant woman. I had no
definite designs in regard to her, and did not dream of anything
of the sort, yet for some reason, whenever we were left alone, I
remembered that her husband looked upon me as his friend, and I
felt awkward. When she played my favourite pieces on the piano or
told me something interesting, I listened with pleasure, and yet
at the same time for some reason the reflection that she loved her
husband, that he was my friend, and that she herself looked upon
me as his friend, obtruded themselves upon me, my spirits flagged,
and I became listless, awkward, and dull. She noticed this change
and would usually say:

"You are dull without your friend. We must send out to the fields
for him."

And when Dmitri Petrovitch came in, she would say:

"Well, here is your friend now. Rejoice."

So passed a year and a half.

It somehow happened one July Sunday that Dmitri Petrovitch and I,
having nothing to do, drove to the big village of Klushino to buy
things for supper. While we were going from one shop to another the
sun set and the evening came on--the evening which I shall probably
never forget in my life. After buying cheese that smelt like soap,
and petrified sausages that smelt of tar, we went to the tavern to
ask whether they had any beer. Our coachman went off to the blacksmith
to get our horses shod, and we told him we would wait for him near
the church. We walked, talked, laughed over our purchases, while a
man who was known in the district by a very strange nickname, "Forty
Martyrs," followed us all the while in silence with a mysterious
air like a detective. This Forty Martyrs was no o