He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly and at that moment he saw himself in the mirror.
His hair was already going grey. And it seemed strange to him that in the last few years he should have got so old and ugly. Her shoulders were warm and trembled to his touch. He was suddenly filled with pity for her life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably beginning to fade and wither, like his own. Why should she love him so much? He always seemed to women not what he really was, and they loved in him, not himself, but the creature of their imagination, the thing they hankered for in life, and when they had discovered their mistake, still they loved him. And not one of them was happy with him. Time passed; he met women and was friends with them, went further and parted, but never once did he love; there was everything but love.
And now at last when his hair was grey he had fallen in love—real love—for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like dear kindred, like husband and wife, like devoted friends; it seemed to them that Fate had destined them for one another, and it was inconceivable that he should have a wife, she a husband; they were like two birds of passage, a male and a female, which had been caught and forced to live in separate cages. They had forgiven each other all the past of which they were ashamed; they forgave everything in the present, and they felt that their love had changed both of them.
Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction, he used to comfort himself with all kinds of arguments, just as they happened to cross his mind, but now he was far removed from any such ideas; he was filled with a profound pity, and he desired to be tender and sincere. . . .
“Don’t cry, my darling,” he said. “You have cried enough. . . . Now let us talk and see if we can’t find some way out.”
Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover some means of avoiding the necessity for concealment and deception, and the torment of living in different towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time. How could they shake off these intolerable fetters?
“How? How?” he asked, holding his head in his hands. “How?”
And it seemed that but a little while and the solution would be found and there would begin a lovely new life; and to both of them it was clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning.
1
[Verstá, slightly over a kilometer; about
2
[Light carriage.]
3
[Local elective assembly.]
4
[A long, close-fitting pleated coat.]
5
[See page 1.]
6
[Peasant.]
7
[Words in Church Slavonic, the liturgical language.]
9
[“Little father.” Batiushki, which occurs later, is the plural.]
8
[Jocular names implying that inn personnel are cads and toadies.]
10
[Village head.]
11
[Cabbage soup.]
12
[Meat dumplings.]
13
[See page 31.]
14
[Village community or meeting.]
15
[Covered traveling wagon.]
16
[That is, the polite form of “you,” vy rather than ty.]
17
[Doctor’s assistant.]
18
[House porter, concierge.]
19
[See page 60.]
20
[See page 31.]
21
[See page 31.]
22
[Thick soup, or steamed cabbage, with meat or fish.]