with horror, "that young, intellectual, extraordinarily
beautiful girl, the daughter of a senator, carrying on an intrigue
with such an ordinary, uninteresting vulgarian? But why should she
not love Lubkov?" I answered myself. "In what is he inferior to me?
Oh, let her love any one she likes, but why lie to me? But why is
she bound to be open with me?" And so I went on over and over again
till I was stupefied.

It was cold in the train; I was travelling first class, but even
so there were three on a side, there were no double windows, the
outer door opened straight into the compartment, and I felt as
though I were in the stocks, cramped, abandoned, pitiful, and my
legs were fearfully numb, and at the same time I kept recalling how
fascinating she had been that morning in her dressing-jacket and
with her hair down, and I was suddenly overcome by such acute
jealousy that I leapt up in anguish, so that my neighbours stared
at me in wonder and positive alarm.

At home I found deep snow and twenty degrees of frost. I'm fond of
the winter; I'm fond of it because at that time, even in the hardest
frosts, it's particularly snug at home. It's pleasant to put on
one's fur jacket and felt overboots on a clear frosty day, to do
something in the garden or in the yard, or to read in a well warmed
room, to sit in my father's study before the open fire, to wash in
my country bath-house. . . . Only if there is no mother in the
house, no sister and no children, it is somehow dreary on winter
evenings, and they seem extraordinarily long and quiet. And the
warmer and snugger it is, the more acutely is this lack felt. In
the winter when I came back from abroad, the evenings were endlessly
long, I was intensely depressed, so depressed that I could not even
read; in the daytime I was coming and going, clearing away the snow
in the garden or feeding the chickens and the calves, but in the
evening it was all up with me.

I had never cared for visitors before, but now I was glad of them,
for I knew there was sure to be talk of Ariadne. Kotlovitch, the
spiritualist, used often to come to talk about his sister, and
sometimes he brought with him his friend Prince Maktuev, who was
as much in love with Ariadne as I was. To sit in Ariadne's room,
to finger the keys of her piano, to look at her music was a necessity
for the prince--he could not live without it; and the spirit of
his grandfather Ilarion was still predicting that sooner or later
she