ng
cards with a professor at the doctors' club. He could already eat
a whole plateful of salt fish and cabbage.

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would
be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time
would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did.
But more than a month passed, real winter had come, and everything
was still clear in his memory as though he had parted with Anna
Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and
more vividly. When in the evening stillness he heard from his study
the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he
listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm
howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his
memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with
the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia,
and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his room, remembering
it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in
his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna
did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about everywhere like
a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though
she were living before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger,
tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had
been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the
bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner--he heard her
breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he
watched the women, looking for some one like her.

He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to
some one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love,
and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to
any one at the bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in
love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying
or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And
there was nothing for him but to talk vaguely of love, of woman,
and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black
eyebrows, and said:

"The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri."

One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with
whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:

"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance
of in Yalta!"

The official got into