Madame Kandurin had been standing all the time at the other window.  She looked from time to time towards the shrubbery, and from the moment I mentioned the prince’s name she did not turn away from the window.

“Excuse me,” she said, screwing up her eyes as she looked towards the road and the gate, “but it would be unfair to allow you only to shoot. . . .  And, besides, what pleasure is there in shooting birds?  What’s it for?  Are they in your way?”

A solitary life, immured within four walls, with its indoor twilight and heavy smell of decaying furniture, disposes people to sentimentality.  Madame Kandurin’s idea did her credit, but I could not resist saying: 

“If one takes that line one ought to go barefoot.  Boots are made out of the leather of slaughtered animals.”

“One must distinguish between a necessity and a caprice,” Madame Kandurin answered in a toneless voice.

She had by now recognized the prince, and did not take her eyes off his figure.  It is hard to describe the delight and the suffering with which her ugly face was radiant!  Her eyes were smiling and shining, her lips were quivering and laughing, while her face craned closer to the panes.  Keeping hold of a flower-pot with both hands, with bated breath and with one foot slightly lifted, she reminded me of a dog pointing and waiting with passionate impatience for “Fetch it!”

I looked at her and at the prince who could not tell a lie once in his life, and I felt angry and bitter against truth and falsehood, which play such an elemental part in the personal happiness of men.

The prince started suddenly, took aim and fired.  A hawk, flying over him, fluttered its wings and flew like an arrow far away.

“He aimed too high!” I said.  “And so, Nadyezhda Lvovna,” I sighed, moving away from the window, “you will not permit . . .”—­Madame Kandurin was silent.

“I have the honour to take my leave,” I said, “and I beg you to forgive my disturbing you. . .”

Madame Kandurin would have turned facing me, and had already moved through a quarter of the angle, when she suddenly hid her face behind the hangings, as though she felt tears in her eyes that she wanted to conceal.

“Good-bye. . . .  Forgive me . . .” she said softly.

I bowed to her back, and strode away across the bright yellow floors, no longer keeping to the carpet.  I was glad to get away from this little domain of gilded boredom and sadness, and I hastened as though anxious to shake off a heavy, fantastic dream with its twilight, its enchanted princess, its lustres. . . .

At the front door a maidservant overtook me and thrust a note into my hand:  “Shooting is permitted on showing this.  N. K.,” I read.