was an Armenian), has a peculiar art
of throwing her whole weight on one's arm and clinging to one's
side like a leech. And so we walk along.

As we pass the Karelins', I see a huge dog, who reminds me of the
dog licence. I think with despair of the work I have begun and sigh.

"What are you sighing for?" asks Nadenka (or Varenka), and heaves
a sigh herself.

Here I must digress for a moment to explain that Nadenka or Varenka
(now I come to think of it, I believe I have heard her called
Mashenka) imagines, I can't guess why, that I am in love with her,
and therefore thinks it her duty as a humane person always to look
at me with compassion and to soothe my wound with words.

"Listen," said she, stopping. "I know why you are sighing. You are
in love, yes; but I beg you for the sake of our friendship to believe
that the girl you love has the deepest respect for you. She cannot
return your love; but is it her fault that her heart has long been
another's?"

Mashenka's nose begins to swell and turn red, her eyes fill with
tears: she evidently expects some answer from me, but, fortunately,
at this moment we arrive. Mashenka's mamma, a good-natured woman
but full of conventional ideas, is sitting on the terrace: glancing
at her daughter's agitated face, she looks intently at me and sighs,
as though saying to herself: "Ah, these young people! they don't
even know how to keep their secrets to themselves!"

On the terrace with her are several young ladies of various colours
and a retired officer who is staying in the villa next to ours. He
was wounded during the last war in the left temple and the right
hip. This unfortunate man is, like myself, proposing to devote the
summer to literary work. He is writing the "Memoirs of a Military
Man." Like me, he begins his honourable labours every morning, but
before he has written more than "I was born in . . ." some Varenka
or Mashenka is sure to appear under his balcony, and the wounded
hero is borne off under guard.

All the party sitting on the terrace are engaged in preparing some
miserable fruit for jam. I make my bows and am about to beat a
retreat, but the young ladies of various colours seize my hat with
a squeal and insist on my staying. I sit down. They give me a plate
of fruit and a hairpin. I begin taking the seeds out.

The young ladies of various colours talk about men: they say that
So-and-So is nice-looking, that So-and-So is handsome but not nice,
that somebod