an't stand these fellows who are old at twenty-eight! I'm nearly
ten years older than you are, and yet which of us is the younger?
Ariadne Grigoryevna, which?"

"You, of course," Ariadne answered him.

And when he was bored with our silence and the attention with which
we stared at our floats he went home, and she said, looking at me
angrily:

"You're really not a man, but a mush, God forgive me! A man ought
to be able to be carried away by his feelings, he ought to be able
to be mad, to make mistakes, to suffer! A woman will forgive you
audacity and insolence, but she will never forgive your reasonableness!"

She was angry in earnest, and went on:

"To succeed, a man must be resolute and bold. Lubkov is not so
handsome as you are, but he is more interesting. He will always
succeed with women because he's not like you; he's a man. . . ."

And there was actually a note of exasperation in her voice.

One day at supper she began saying, not addressing me, that if she
were a man she would not stagnate in the country, but would travel,
would spend the winter somewhere aboard--in Italy, for instance.
Oh, Italy! At this point my father unconsciously poured oil on the
flames; he began telling us at length about Italy, how splendid it
was there, the exquisite scenery, the museums. Ariadne suddenly
conceived a burning desire to go to Italy. She positively brought
her fist down on the table and her eyes flashed as she said: "I
must go!"

After that came conversations every day about Italy: how splendid
it would be in Italy--ah, Italy!--oh, Italy! And when Ariadne
looked at me over her shoulder, from her cold and obstinate expression
I saw that in her dreams she had already conquered Italy with all
its salons, celebrated foreigners and tourists, and there was no
holding her back now. I advised her to wait a little, to put off
her tour for a year or two, but she frowned disdainfully and said:

"You're as prudent as an old woman!"

Lubkov was in favour of the tour. He said it could be done very
cheaply, and he, too, would go to Italy and have a rest there from
family life.

I behaved, I confess, as naively as a schoolboy.

Not from jealousy, but from a foreboding of something terrible and
extraordinary, I tried as far as possible not to leave them alone
together, and they made fun of me. For instance, when I went in
they would pretend they had just been kissing one another, and so
on. But lo and behold, one fine morni