e waiting for somebody to come from
the steamer. Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She smelled her flowers and
did not look at Gomov.

"The weather has got pleasanter toward evening," he said. "Where shall
we go now? Shall we take a carriage?"

She did not answer.

He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her and kissed her lips,
and he was kindled with the perfume and the moisture of the flowers; at
once he started and looked round; had not some one seen?

"Let us go to your--" he murmured.

And they walked quickly away.

Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which she had bought at the
Japanese shop. Gomov looked at her and thought: "What strange chances
there are in life!" From the past there came the memory of earlier
good-natured women, gay in their love, grateful to him for their
happiness, short though it might be; and of others--like his wife--who
loved without sincerity, and talked overmuch and affectedly,
hysterically, as though they were protesting that it was not love, nor
passion, but something more important; and of the few beautiful cold
women, into whose eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression, a
stubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more than it can give; they
were no longer in their first youth, they were capricious, unstable,
domineering, imprudent, and when Gomov became cold toward them then
their beauty roused him to hatred, and the lace on their lingerie
reminded him of the scales of fish.

But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of inexperienced youth, a
feeling of constraint; an impression of perplexity and wonder, as though
some one had suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, "the lady
with the toy dog" took what had happened somehow seriously, with a
particular gravity, as though thinking that this was her downfall and
very strange and improper. Her features seemed to sink and wither, and
on either side of her face her long hair hung mournfully down; she sat
crestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin in some old
picture.

"It is not right," she said. "You are the first to lose respect for me."

There was a melon on the table. Gomov cut a slice and began to eat it
slowly. At least half an hour passed in silence.

Anna Sergueyevna was very touching; she irradiated the purity of a
simple, devout, inexperienced woman; the solitary candle on the table
hardly lighted her face, but it showed her very wretched.

"Why should I cease