Her room was stuffy and smelt of the perfume she had bought in the Japanese shop. Looking at her now Gurov thought: ‘The encounters one has in life!’ He still remembered those carefree, light-hearted women in his past, so happy in their love and grateful to him for their happiness – however short-lived. And he recalled women who, like his wife, made love insincerely, with too much talk, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that seemed to say that it was neither love nor passion, but something more significant. And he recalled two or three very beautiful, cold women across whose faces there suddenly flashed a predatory expression, a stubborn desire to seize, to snatch from life more than it could provide… and these women were no longer young; they were capricious, irrational, domineering and unintelligent. And when Gurov cooled towards them their beauty aroused hatred in him and the lace on their underclothes seemed like fish scales.

But here there was that same hesitancy, that same discomfiture, that gaucheness of inexperienced youth. And there was an air of embarrassment, as if someone had just knocked at the door. In her own particular, very serious way, Anna Sergeyevna, that lady with the little dog, regarded what had happened just as if it were her downfall. So it seemed – and it was all very weird and out of place. Her features sank and faded, and her long hair hung sadly on each side of her face. She struck a pensive, dejected pose, like the woman taken in adultery in an old-fashioned painting.