e those at Moscow who are slow to move,
irresolute, domesticated, for it becomes at last an acute and
extraordinary complicated problem and a nuisance. But whenever he met
and was interested in a new woman, then his experience would slip away
from his memory, and he would long to live, and everything would seem so
simple and amusing.

And it so happened that one evening he dined in the gardens, and the
lady in the broad-brimmed hat came up at a leisurely pace and sat at the
next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, her coiffure told him
that she belonged to society, that she was married, that she was paying
her first visit to Talta, that she was alone, and that she was bored....
There is a great deal of untruth in the gossip about the immorality of
the place. He scorned such tales, knowing that they were for the most
part concocted by people who would be only too ready to sin if they had
the chance, but when the lady sat down at the next table, only a yard or
two away from him, his thoughts were filled with tales of easy
conquests, of trips to the mountains; and he was suddenly possessed by
the alluring idea of a quick transitory liaison, a moment's affair with
an unknown woman whom he knew not even by name.

He beckoned to the little dog, and when it came up to him, wagged his
finger at it. The dog began to growl. Gomov again wagged his finger.

The lady glanced at him and at once cast her eyes down.

"He won't bite," she said and blushed.

"May I give him a bone?"--and when she nodded emphatically, he asked
affably: "Have you been in Talta long?"

"About five days."

"And I am just dragging through my second week."

They were silent for a while.

"Time goes quickly," she said, "and it is amazingly boring here."

"It is the usual thing to say that it is boring here. People live quite
happily in dull holes like Bieliev or Zhidra, but as soon as they come
here they say: 'How boring it is! The very dregs of dullness!' One would
think they came from Spain."

She smiled. Then both went on eating in silence as though they did not
know each other; but after dinner they went off together--and then
began an easy, playful conversation as though they were perfectly happy,
and it was all one to them where they went or what they talked of. They
walked and talked of how the sea was strangely luminous; the water
lilac, so soft and warm, and athwart it the moon cast a golden streak.
They said how stifling it was af