“I promise on my honour, I swear to God, I won’t be afraid and I’ll speak to her today.”

It was seven o’clock in the evening—­the time when the scent of white acacia and lilac is so strong that the air and the very trees seem heavy with the fragrance.  The band was already playing in the town gardens.  The horses made a resounding thud on the pavement, on all sides there were sounds of laughter, talk, and the banging of gates.  The soldiers they met saluted the officers, the schoolboys bowed to Nikitin, and all the people who were hurrying to the gardens to hear the band were pleased at the sight of the party.  And how warm it was!  How soft-looking were the clouds scattered carelessly about the sky, how kindly and comforting the shadows of the poplars and the acacias, which stretched across the street and reached as far as the balconies and second stories of the houses on the other side.

They rode on out of the town and set off at a trot along the highroad.  Here there was no scent of lilac and acacia, no music of the band, but there was the fragrance of the fields, there was the green of young rye and wheat, the marmots were squeaking, the rooks were cawing.  Wherever one looked it was green, with only here and there black patches of bare ground, and far away to the left in the cemetery a white streak of apple-blossom.

They passed the slaughter-houses, then the brewery, and overtook a military band hastening to the suburban gardens.

“Polyansky has a very fine horse, I don’t deny that,” Masha said to Nikitin, with a glance towards the officer who was riding beside Varya.  “But it has blemishes.  That white patch on its left leg ought not to be there, and, look, it tosses its head.  You can’t train it not to now; it will toss its head till the end of its days.”

Masha was as passionate a lover of horses as her father.  She felt a pang when she saw other people with fine horses, and was pleased when she saw defects in them.  Nikitin knew nothing about horses; it made absolutely no difference to him whether he held his horse on the bridle or on the curb, whether he trotted or galloped; he only felt that his position was strained and unnatural, and that consequently the officers who knew how to sit in their saddles must please Masha more than he could.  And he was jealous of the officers.

As they rode by the suburban gardens some one suggested their going in and getting some seltzer-water.  They went in.  There were no trees but oaks in the gardens; they had only just come into leaf, so that through the young foliage the whole garden could still be seen with its platform, little tables, and swings, and the crows’ nests were visible, looking like big hats.  The party dismounted near a table and asked for seltzer-water.  People they knew, walking about the garden, came up to them.  Among them the army doctor in high boots, and the conductor of the band, waiting for the musicians.  The doctor must have taken Nikitin for a student, for he asked:  “Have you come for the summer holidays?”