with the supper and with each other.

Next day Ariadne presented me to the Russian family as: "The son
of a distinguished professor whose estate is next to ours."

She talked to this family about nothing but estates and crops, and
kept appealing to me. She wanted to appear to be a very wealthy
landowner, and did, in fact, succeed in doing so. Her manner was
superb like that of a real aristocrat, which indeed she was by
birth.

"But what a person my aunt is!" she said suddenly, looking at me
with a smile. "We had a slight tiff, and she has bolted off to
Meran. What do you say to that?"

Afterwards when we were walking in the park I asked her:

"What aunt were you talking of just now? What aunt is that?"

"That was a saving lie," laughed Ariadne. "They must not know I'm
without a chaperon."

After a moment's silence she came closer to me and said:

"My dear, my dear, do be friends with Lubkov. He is so unhappy! His
wife and mother are simply awful."

She used the formal mode of address in speaking to Lubkov, and when
she was going up to bed she said good-night to him exactly as she
did to me, and their rooms were on different floors. All this made
me hope that it was all nonsense, and that there was no sort of
love affair between them, and I felt at ease when I met him. And
when one day he asked me for the loan of three hundred roubles, I
gave it to him with the greatest pleasure.

Every day we spent in enjoying ourselves and in nothing but enjoying
ourselves; we strolled in the park, we ate, we drank. Every day
there were conversations with the Russian family. By degrees I got
used to the fact that if I went into the park I should be sure to
meet the old man with jaundice, the Catholic priest, and the Austrian
General, who always carried a pack of little cards, and wherever
it was possible sat down and played patience, nervously twitching
his shoulders. And the band played the same thing over and over
again.

At home in the country I used to feel ashamed to meet the peasants
when I was fishing or on a picnic party on a working day; here too
I was ashamed at the sight of the footmen, the coachmen, and the
workmen who met us. It always seemed to me they were looking at me
and thinking: "Why are you doing nothing?" And I was conscious of
this feeling of shame every day from morning to night. It was a
strange, unpleasant, monotonous time; it was only varied by Lubkov's
borrowing from me now a hundred, now fift