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‘A large crowd of us went to see Anna Alekseyevna off. She had already said goodbye to her husband and children, and the train was about to leave at any moment. I rushed to her compartment to put a basket that she’d almost forgotten onto the luggage-rack. Now it was time to say farewell. When our e…

‘Every time I went into town I could tell from her eyes that she had been waiting for me, and she would admit that from the moment she’d got up she’d had some kind of premonition that I would be coming. We had long talks and there were long silences, and we didn’t declare our love, but concealed it…

‘But it’s myself I’m concerned with, not him. I’d like to tell you about the change that came over me during the few hours I spent on his estate. Later, when we were having tea, his cook brought us a plateful of gooseberries. They weren’t shop gooseberries, but home-grown, the first fruits of the b…

‘Just look at that moon!’ he said, looking up.

It was already midnight. To his right, the whole village could be clearly seen, with the long road stretching into the distance for about three miles. Everything was buried in a deep, peaceful slumber. Not a sound or movement anywhere and it was har…

Life became completely and utterly depressing without a samovar in the Chikildeyevs’ hut. There was something humiliating, degrading in this deprivation, as though the hut itself were in disgrace. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the elder had only taken the table, all the benches and pots instead –…