ter the hot day. Gomov told her how he
came from Moscow and was a philologist by education, but in a bank by
profession; and how he had once wanted to sing in opera, but gave it up;
and how he had two houses in Moscow.... And from her he learned that she
came from Petersburg, was born there, but married at S. where she had
been living for the last two years; that she would stay another month at
Talta, and perhaps her husband would come for her, because, he too,
needed a rest. She could not tell him what her husband was--Provincial
Administration or Zemstvo Council--and she seemed to think it funny. And
Gomov found out that her name was Anna Sergueyevna.

In his room at night, he thought of her and how they would meet next
day. They must do so. As he was going to sleep, it struck him that she
could only lately have left school, and had been at her lessons even as
his daughter was then; he remembered how bashful and gauche she was when
she laughed and talked with a stranger--it must be, he thought, the
first time she had been alone, and in such a place with men walking
after her and looking at her and talking to her, all with the same
secret purpose which she could not but guess. He thought of her slender
white neck and her pretty, grey eyes.

"There is something touching about her," he thought as he began to fall
asleep.

II

A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors it was stifling, and in the
streets the dust whirled along. All day long he was plagued with thirst
and he came into the pavilion every few minutes and offered Anna
Sergueyevna an iced drink or an ice. It was impossibly hot.

In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked to the jetty to
see the steamer come in. There was quite a crowd all gathered to meet
somebody, for they carried bouquets. And among them were clearly marked
the peculiarities of Talta: the elderly ladies were youngly dressed and
there were many generals.

The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and before it turned into
the jetty it had to do a great deal of manoeuvring. Anna Sergueyevna
looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though
she were looking for friends, and when she turned to Gomov, her eyes
shone. She talked much and her questions were abrupt, and she forgot
what she had said; and then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd.

The well-dressed people went away, the wind dropped, and Gomov and Anna
Sergueyevna stood as though they wer