He felt that he had learnt sufficiently from bitter experience to call them by whatever name he liked, yet, for all that, he could not have survived two days without his ‘inferior breed’. He was bored in male company, not very talkative and offhand. But with women he felt free, knowing what to talk to them about and how to behave. Even saying nothing at all to them was easy for him. There was something attractive, elusive in his appearance, in his character – in his whole personality – that appealed to women and lured them to him. He was well aware of this and some power similarly attracted him.

Repeated – and in fact bitter – experience had long taught him that every affair, which at first adds spice and variety to life and seems such a charming, light-hearted adventure, inevitably develops into an enormous, extraordinarily complex problem with respectable people – especially Muscovites, who are so hesitant, so inhibited – until finally the whole situation becomes a real nightmare. But on every new encounter with an interesting woman all this experience was somehow forgotten and he simply wanted to enjoy life – and it all seemed so easy and amusing.

Later, back in his hotel room, he thought about her. He was bound to meet her tomorrow, of that there was no doubt. As he went to bed he remembered that she had only recently left boarding-school, that she had been a schoolgirl just like his own daughter – and he remembered how much hesitancy, how much awkwardness there was in her laughter, in the way she talked to a stranger – it must have been the very first time in her life that she had been on her own, in such surroundings, where men followed her, eyed her and spoke to her with one secret aim in mind, which she could hardly fail to guess. He recalled her slender, frail neck, her beautiful grey eyes.

‘Still, there’s something pathetic about her,’ he thought as he fell asleep.

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.

‘How can I defend myself? I’m a wicked, vile woman. I despise myself and I’m not going to make any excuses. It’s not my husband but myself I’ve deceived. And I don’t mean only just now, but for a long time. My husband’s a fine honest man, but he’s no more than a lackey. What does he do in that office of his? I’ve no idea. But I do know he’s a mere lackey. I was twenty when I married him and dying from curiosity; but I wanted something better. Surely there must be a different kind of life, I told myself. I wanted to live life to the full, to enjoy life… to enjoy it! I was burning with curiosity. You won’t understand this, but I swear that my feelings ran away with me, something was happening to me and there was no holding me back. So I told my husband I was ill and I came here… And ever since I’ve been going around as if intoxicated, like someone demented. So, now I’m a vulgar, worthless woman whom everyone has the right to despise.’

In Oreanda they sat on a bench near the church and looked down at the sea without saying a word. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist; white clouds lay motionless on the mountain tops. Not one leaf stirred on the trees, cicadas chirped, and the monotonous, hollow roar of the sea that reached them from below spoke of peace, of that eternal slumber that awaits us. And so it roared down below when neither Yalta nor Oreanda existed. It was roaring now and would continue its hollow, indifferent booming when we are no more. And in this permanency, in this utter indifference to the life and death of every one of us there perhaps lies hidden a pledge of our eternal salvation, of never-ceasing progress of life upon earth, of the never-ceasing march towards perfection. As he sat there beside that young woman who seemed so beautiful at daybreak, soothed and enchanted at the sight of those magical surroundings – sea, mountains, clouds, wide skies – Gurov reflected that, if one thought hard about it, everything on earth was truly beautiful except those things we ourselves think of and do when we forget the higher aims of existence and our human dignity.

One night, as he left the Doctors’ Club with his partner – a civil servant – he was unable to hold back any more and said:

‘If you only knew what an enchanting woman I met in Yalta!’

The civil servant climbed into his sledge and drove off. But then he suddenly turned round and called out:

‘Dmitry Dmitrich!’

‘What?’

‘You were right the other day – the sturgeon was off!’

This trite remark for some reason suddenly nettled Gurov, striking him as degrading and dirty. What barbarous manners, what faces! What meaningless nights, what dismal, unmemorable days! Frenetic card games, gluttony, constant conversations about the same old thing. Those pointless business affairs and perpetual conversations – always on the same theme – were commandeering the best part of his time, his best strength, so that in the end there remained only a limited, humdrum life, just trivial nonsense. And it was impossible to run away, to escape – one might as well be in a lunatic asylum or a convict squad!