"You can't get on in the house without an iron," said Samoylenko,
blushing at Laevsky's speaking to him so openly of a lady he knew.
"You are out of humour to-day, Vanya, I notice. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna
is a splendid woman, highly educated, and you are a man of the
highest intellect. Of course, you are not married," Samoylenko went
on, glancing round at the adjacent tables, "but that's not your
fault; and besides . . . one ought to be above conventional prejudices
and rise to the level of modern ideas. I believe in free love myself,
yes. . . . But to my thinking, once you have settled together, you
ought to go on living together all your life."

"Without love?"

"I will tell you directly," said Samoylenko. "Eight years ago there
was an old fellow, an agent, here--a man of very great intelligence.
Well, he used to say that the great thing in married life was
patience. Do you hear, Vanya? Not love, but patience. Love cannot
last long. You have lived two years in love, and now evidently your
married life has reached the period when, in order to preserve
equilibrium, so to speak, you ought to exercise all your
patience. . . ."

"You believe in your old agent; to me his words are meaningless.
Your old man could be a hypocrite; he could exercise himself in the
virtue of patience, and, as he did so, look upon a person he did
not love as an object indispensable for his moral exercises; but I
have not yet fallen so low. If I want to exercise myself in patience,
I will buy dumb-bells or a frisky horse, but I'll leave human beings
alone."