He behaved as if he did not notice me, and did not say much to her. But what he did say seemed somehow specially wise and significant.

I ceased to work, to read, even to walk in the neighbourhood or to ride. Like a beetle tied by the leg, I circled constantly round the adored lodge. I felt I could have stayed there for ever, but this was not possible. My mother grumbled and sometimes Zinaida herself used to drive me away. Then I used to lock myself in my room, or go to the end of the garden, climb on to the ruin of a high stone greenhouse and, dangling my legs from the wall which looked out on the road, would sit for hours, staring and staring, seeing nothing. Near me, over the dusty nettles, white butterflies fluttered lazily. A pert little sparrow would fly down on to a half-broken red brick nearby, and would irritate me with its chirping, ceaselessly turning its whole body with its outspread tail; the crows, still wary, occasionally cawed, sitting high, high on the bare top of a birch – while the sun and wind played gently in its spreading branches; the bells of the Donskoy monastery would sometimes float across – tranquil and sad – and I would sit and gaze and listen, and would be filled with a nameless sensation which had everything in it: sorrow and joy, a premonition of the future, and desire, and fear of life. At the time, I understood none of this, and could not have given a name to any of the feelings which seethed within me; or else I would have called it all by one name – the name of Zinaida.

And Zinaida still played with me like a cat with a mouse. Sometimes she flirted with me – and that would excite me, and I would melt. At other times, she would suddenly push me away – and then I dared not approach her, dared not look at her. I remember once that she was very cold with me for several days. I was completely unnerved – I would hurry timidly into the lodge and then, like a coward, I would stay with the old princess, in spite of the fact that she was particularly noisy and querulous at this time. Her financial affairs were going badly, and she had already had two encounters with the local police.

Once I was in the garden when, passing the well-known hedge, I saw Zinaida; leaning back on both her arms, she was sitting motionless on the grass. I was about to tiptoe away, but she suddenly raised her head and beckoned to me imperiously. I stood transfixed. I did not understand at once. She repeated the gesture. Immediately I leaped over the hedge and ran up to her happily, but she stopped me with a glance and pointed to a path two steps away from her. In confusion, and not knowing what to do, I went down on my knees on the edge of the path. She was so pale, every feature betrayed such bitter grief, such utter exhaustion that I felt a pang and murmured involuntarily, ‘What is the matter?’

Zinaida stretched out her hand, plucked a blade of grass, bit it, and flung it away from her.

‘Do you love me very much?’ she asked at last. ‘Do you?’

I did not reply – and indeed what reason had I to reply?

‘Yes!’ she said, looking at me as before, ‘it is so. The same eyes – ’ she added; then became thoughtful and covered her face with her hands. ‘Everything has become horrible to me,’ she whispered, ‘why don’t I go to the other end of the world! I can’t bear it, I can’t make it come right…and what is there before me?…God, I am so wretched!’

‘Why?’ I asked timidly.

Zinaida did not reply, but only shrugged her shoulders. I went on kneeling and looking at her with infinite distress. Every one of her words pierced my heart like a knife. At that moment I would, I think, gladly have given up my life if only that could end her grief. I looked at her, and still not understanding why she was so unhappy, conjured a vivid image of how, suddenly, in a paroxysm of ungovernable grief, she had walked into the garden and fallen to the ground as though mown down. All round us it was bright and green. The wind murmured in the leaves of the trees, now and then bending the raspberry canes above Zinaida’s head.