I'd be continually making up something that I must see her about: 'It's
high time,' I'd say to myself, 'to put the double windows in for the
winter,' and the whole day I'd idle away over at her place putting in
the windows and take good care to leave a couple of them over for the
next day too.

"'I ought to count over Vasya's pigeons, to see none of them have
strayed,' and so on. I used always to be talking to her across the
fence, and in the end I made a little gate in the fence so as not to
have to go so far round. From womankind comes much evil into the world
and every kind of abomination. Not we sinners only; even the saints
themselves have been led astray by them. Mashenka did not try to keep
me at a distance. Instead of thinking of her husband and being on her
guard, she fell in love with me. I began to notice that she was dull
without me, and was always walking to and fro by the fence looking into
my yard through the cracks.

"My brains were going round in my head in a sort of frenzy. On Thursday
in Holy Week I was going early in the morning--it was scarcely light--to
market. I passed close by her gate, and the Evil One was by me--at my
elbow. I looked--she had a gate with open trellis work at the top--and
there she was, up already, standing in the middle of the yard, feeding
the ducks. I could not restrain myself, and I called her name. She came
up and looked at me through the trellis.... Her little face was white,
her eyes soft and sleepy-looking.... I liked her looks immensely, and
I began paying her compliments, as though we were not at the gate, but
just as one does on namedays, while she blushed, and laughed, and kept
looking straight into my eyes without winking.... I lost all sense and
began to declare my love to her.... She opened the gate, and from that
morning we began to live as man and wife...."