k. He tried to persuade her, said rude
things, but she--a frivolous, pampered woman, who had run through
two fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her time, and always
gravitated towards acquaintances of high rank--did not understand
him, and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he
hated.

In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of
a strange, unpleasant feeling which was absolutely new to him. . . .
It seemed to him that he was in love with Anna Fyodorovna, the
Shumihins' cousin, who was staying with them. She was a vivacious,
loud-voiced, laughter-loving, healthy, and vigorous lady of thirty,
with rosy cheeks, plump shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual
smile on her thin lips. She was neither young nor beautiful--
Volodya knew that perfectly well; but for some reason he could not
help thinking of her, looking at her while she shrugged her plump
shoulders and moved her flat back as she played croquet, or after
prolonged laughter and running up and down stairs, sank into a low
chair, and, half closing her eyes and gasping for breath, pretended
that she was stifling and could not breathe. She was married. Her
husband, a staid and dignified architect, came once a week to the
villa, slept soundly, and returned to town. Volodya's strange feeling
had begun with his conceiving an unaccountable hatred for the
architect, and feeling relieved every time he went back to town.

Now, sitting in the arbour, thinking of his examination next day,
and of his _maman_, at whom they laughed, he felt an intense desire
to see Nyuta (that was what the Shumihins called Anna Fyodorovna),
to hear her laughter and the rustle of her dress. . . . This desire
was not like the pure, poetic love of which he read in novels and
about which he dreamed every night when he went to bed; it was
strange, incomprehensible; he was ashamed of it, and afraid of it
as of something very wrong and impure, something which it was
disagreeable to confess even to himself.

"It's not love," he said to himself. "One can't fall in love with
women of thirty who are married. It is only a little intrigue
. . . . Yes, an intrigue. . . ."

Pondering on the "intrigue," he thought of his uncontrollable
shyness, his lack of moustache, his freckles, his narrow eyes, and
put himself in his imagination side by side with Nyuta, and the
juxtaposition seemed to him impossible; then he made haste to imagine
himself bold, handsome,