to respect you?" asked Gomov. "You don't know what
you are saying."

"God forgive me!" she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It is
horrible."

"You seem to want to justify yourself."

"How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low woman and I despise
myself. I have no thought of justifying myself. It is not my husband
that I have deceived, but myself. And not only now but for a long time
past. My husband may be a good honest man, but he is a lackey. I do not
know what work he does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul. I
was twenty when I married him. I was overcome by curiosity. I longed for
something. 'Surely,' I said to myself, 'there is another kind of life.'
I longed to live! To live, and to live.... Curiosity burned me up....
You do not understand it, but I swear by God, I could no longer control
myself. Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold myself
in. I told my husband that I was ill and came here.... And here I have
been walking about dizzily, like a lunatic.... And now I have become a
low, filthy woman whom everybody may despise."

Gomov was already bored; her simple words irritated him with their
unexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for the tears in her eyes
he might have thought her to be joking or playing a part.

"I do not understand," he said quietly. "What do you want?"

She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him.

"Believe, believe me, I implore you," she said. "I love a pure, honest
life, and sin is revolting to me. I don't know myself what I am doing.
Simple people say: 'The devil entrapped me,' and I can say of myself:
'The Evil One tempted me.'"

"Don't, don't," he murmured.

He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietly
and tenderly, and gradually quieted her and she was happy again, and
they both began to laugh.

Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the quay; the town
with its cypresses looked like a city of the dead, but the sea still
roared and broke against the shore; a boat swung on the waves; and in
it sleepily twinkled the light of a lantern.

They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.

"Just now in the hall," said Gomov, "I discovered your name written on
the board--von Didenitz. Is your husband a German?"

"No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he himself is an
Orthodox Russian."

At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down at
the sea and were s