I loved Genya.  I must have loved her because she met me when I came and saw me off when I went away; because she looked at me tenderly and enthusiastically.  How touchingly beautiful were her pale face, slender neck, slender arms, her weakness, her idleness, her reading.  And intelligence?  I suspected in her intelligence above the average.  I was fascinated by the breadth of her views, perhaps because they were different from those of the stern, handsome Lida, who disliked me.  Genya liked me, because I was an artist.  I had conquered her heart by my talent, and had a passionate desire to paint for her sake alone; and I dreamed of her as of my little queen who with me would possess those trees, those fields, the mists, the dawn, the exquisite and beautiful scenery in the midst of which I had felt myself hopelessly solitary and useless.

“Stay another minute,” I begged her.  “I beseech you.”

I took off my overcoat and put it over her chilly shoulders; afraid of looking ugly and absurd in a man’s overcoat, she laughed, threw it off, and at that instant I put my arms round her and covered her face, shoulders, and hands with kisses.

“Till to-morrow,” she whispered, and softly, as though afraid of breaking upon the silence of the night, she embraced me.  “We have no secrets from one another.  I must tell my mother and my sister at once. . . .  It’s so dreadful!  Mother is all right; mother likes you—­but Lida!”

She ran to the gates.

“Good-bye!” she called.

And then for two minutes I heard her running.  I did not want to go home, and I had nothing to go for.  I stood still for a little time hesitating, and made my way slowly back, to look once more at the house in which she lived, the sweet, simple old house, which seemed to be watching me from the windows of its upper storey, and understanding all about it.  I walked by the terrace, sat on the seat by the tennis ground, in the dark under the old elm-tree, and looked from there at the house.  In the windows of the top storey where Misuce slept there appeared a bright light, which changed to a soft green—­they had covered the lamp with the shade.  Shadows began to move. . . .  I was full of tenderness, peace, and satisfaction with myself—­satisfaction at having been able to be carried away by my feelings and having fallen in love, and at the same time I felt uncomfortable at the thought that only a few steps away from me, in one of the rooms of that house there was Lida, who disliked and perhaps hated me.  I went on sitting there wondering whether Genya would come out; I listened and fancied I heard voices talking upstairs.

About an hour passed.  The green light went out, and the shadows were no longer visible.  The moon was standing high above the house, and lighting up the sleeping garden and the paths; the dahlias and the roses in front of the house could be seen distinctly, and looked all the same colour.  It began to grow very cold.  I went out of the garden, picked up my coat on the road, and slowly sauntered home.