would be his wife. The prince usually stayed a long time with
us, from lunch to midnight, saying nothing all the time; in silence
he would drink two or three bottles of beer, and from time to time,
to show that he too was taking part in the conversation, he would
laugh an abrupt, melancholy, foolish laugh. Before going home he
would always take me aside and ask me in an undertone: "When did
you see Ariadne Grigoryevna last? Was she quite well? I suppose
she's not tired of being out there?"
Spring came on. There was the harrowing to do and then the sowing
of spring corn and clover. I was sad, but there was the feeling of
spring. One longed to accept the inevitable. Working in the fields
and listening to the larks, I asked myself: "Couldn't I have done
with this question of personal happiness once and for all? Couldn't
I lay aside my fancy and marry a simple peasant girl?"
Suddenly when we were at our very busiest, I got a letter with the
Italian stamp, and the clover and the beehives and the calves and
the peasant girl all floated away like smoke. This time Ariadne
wrote that she was profoundly, infinitely unhappy. She reproached
me for not holding out a helping hand to her, for looking down upon
her from the heights of my virtue and deserting her at the moment
of danger. All this was written in a large, nervous handwriting
with blots and smudges, and it was evident that she wrote in haste
and distress. In conclusion she besought me to come and save her.
Again my anchor was hauled up and I was carried away. Ariadne was
in Rome. I arrived late in the evening, and when she saw me, she
sobbed and threw herself on my neck. She had not changed at all
that winter, and was just as young and charming. We had supper
together and afterwards drove about Rome until dawn, and all the
time she kept telling me about her doings. I asked where Lubkov
was.
"Don't remind me of that creature!" she cried. "He is loathsome and
disgusting to me!"
"But I thought you loved him," I said.
"Never," she said. "At first he struck me as original and aroused
my pity, that was all. He is insolent and takes a woman by storm.
And that's attractive. But we won't talk about him. That is a
melancholy page in my life. He has gone to Russia to get money.
Serve him right! I told him not to dare to come back."
She was living then, not at an hotel, but in a private lodging of
two rooms which she had decorated in her own taste, frigidly and
luxurio
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