was not like the pure, poetic love of which he read in novels and
about which he dreamed every night when he went to bed; it was
strange, incomprehensible; he was ashamed of it, and afraid of it
as of something very wrong and impure, something which it was
disagreeable to confess even to himself.

"It's not love," he said to himself. "One can't fall in love with
women of thirty who are married. It is only a little intrigue
. . . . Yes, an intrigue. . . ."

Pondering on the "intrigue," he thought of his uncontrollable
shyness, his lack of moustache, his freckles, his narrow eyes, and
put himself in his imagination side by side with Nyuta, and the
juxtaposition seemed to him impossible; then he made haste to imagine
himself bold, handsome, witty, dressed in the latest fashion.

When his dreams were at their height, as he sat huddled together
and looking at the ground in a dark corner of the arbour, he heard
the sound of light footsteps. Some one was coming slowly along the
avenue. Soon the steps stopped and something white gleamed in the
entrance.

"Is there any one here?" asked a woman's voice.

Volodya recognised the voice, and raised his head in a fright.

"Who is here?" asked Nyuta, going into the arbour. "Ah, it is you,
Volodya? What are you doing here? Thinking? And how can you go on
thinking, thinking, thinking? . . . That's the way to go out of
your mind!"