hat we can't go on living together, I will
show her the letter. Then there will be no danger in it."

"Do you know what, Vanya," said Samoylenko, and a sad and imploring
expression came into his face, as though he were going to ask him
about something very touching and were afraid of being refused.
"Marry her, my dear boy!"

"Why?"

"Do your duty to that splendid woman! Her husband is dead, and so
Providence itself shows you what to do!"

"But do understand, you queer fellow, that it is impossible. To
marry without love is as base and unworthy of a man as to perform
mass without believing in it."

"But it's your duty to."

"Why is it my duty?" Laevsky asked irritably.

"Because you took her away from her husband and made yourself
responsible for her."

"But now I tell you in plain Russian, I don't love her!"

"Well, if you've no love, show her proper respect, consider her
wishes. . . ."

"'Show her respect, consider her wishes,'" Laevsky mimicked him.
"As though she were some Mother Superior! . . . You are a poor
psychologist and physiologist if you think that living with a woman
one can get off with nothing but respect and consideration. What a
woman thinks most of is her bedroom."

"Vanya, Vanya!" said Samoylenko, overcome with confusion.

"You are an elderly child, a theorist, while I am an old man in
spite of my years, and practical, and we shall never understand one
another. We had better drop this conversation. Mustapha!" Laevsky
shouted to the waiter. "What's our bill?"

"No, no . . ." the doctor cried in dismay, clutching Laevsky's arm.
"It is for me to pay. I ordered it. Make it out to me," he cried
to Mustapha.

The friends got up and walked in silence along the sea-front. When
they reached the boulevard, they stopped and shook hands at parting.

"You are awfully spoilt, my friend!" Samoylenko sighed. "Fate has
sent you a young, beautiful, cultured woman, and you refuse the
gift, while if God were to give me a crooked old woman, how pleased
I should be if only she were kind and affectionate! I would live
with her in my vineyard and . . ."

Samoylenko caught himself up and said:

"And she might get the samovar ready for me there, the old hag."

After parting with Laevsky he walked along the boulevard. When,
bulky and majestic, with a stern expression on his face, he walked
along the boulevard in his snow-white tunic and superbly polished
boots, squaring his chest, decorated with the Vla