Summary

This chapter starts when Nabokov is 16 and in love for the first time. It is summer and in the distance he remembers the war, the Russian Revolution but it had not yet affected their family life yet—though his father was away serving in his political position. He sees a girl walking through the woods with her friends and every day with his butterfly net in hand, goes to see if he can find her.

He watches her for weeks with her friends, finally one day he finds her alone. Her name is Tamara and she is 15 when they meet. They have a secret love affair—though his mother, tutor and gardener know. He sneaks away in the afternoon and at night to visit her in the woods. Though they could go about the affair in a proper way by meeting each other’s...