n Yalta?"

"Five days."

"And I have already dragged out a fortnight here."

There was a brief silence.

"Time goes fast, and yet it is so dull here!" she said, not looking
at him.

"That's only the fashion to say it is dull here. A provincial will
live in Belyov or Zhidra and not be dull, and when he comes here
it's 'Oh, the dulness! Oh, the dust!' One would think he came from
Grenada."

She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers,
but after dinner they walked side by side; and there sprang up
between them the light jesting conversation of people who are free
and satisfied, to whom it does not matter where they go or what
they talk about. They walked and talked of the strange light on the
sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden
streak from the moon upon it. They talked of how sultry it was after
a hot day. Gurov told her that he came from Moscow, that he had
taken his degree in Arts, but had a post in a bank; that he had
trained as an opera-singer, but had given it up, that he owned two
houses in Moscow. . . . And from her he learnt that she had grown
up in Petersburg, but had lived in S---- since her marriage two
years before, that she was staying another month in Yalta, and that
her husband, who needed a holiday too, might perhaps come and fetch
her. She was not sure whether her husband had a post in a Crown
Department or under the Provincial Council--and was amused by her
own ignorance. And Gurov learnt, too, that she was called Anna
Sergeyevna.

Afterwards he thought about her in his room at the hotel--thought
she would certainly meet him next day; it would be sure to happen.
As he got into bed he thought how lately she had been a girl at
school, doing lessons like his own daughter; he recalled the
diffidence, the angularity, that was still manifest in her laugh
and her manner of talking with a stranger. This must have been the
first time in her life she had been alone in surroundings in which
she was followed, looked at, and spoken to merely from a secret
motive which she could hardly fail to guess. He recalled her slender,
delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes.

"There's something pathetic about her, anyway," he thought, and
fell asleep.

II

A week had passed since they had made acquaintance. It was a holiday.
It was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the
dust round and round, and blew people's hats off. It was a thirsty
day, and