instantaneously leapt up from the seat, but stopped short, and could not
utter a word. She too was silent. He felt great embarrassment; but her
embarrassment was no less. Aratov, even through the veil, could not help
noticing how deadly pale she had turned. Yet she was the first to speak.

'Thanks,' she began in an unsteady voice, 'thanks for coming. I did not
expect ...' She turned a little away and walked along the boulevard. Aratov
walked after her.

'You have, perhaps, thought ill of me,' she went on, without turning her
head; 'indeed, my conduct is very strange.... But I had heard so much about
you ... but no! I ... that was not the reason.... If only you knew....
There was so much I wanted to tell you, my God!... But how to do it ... how
to do it!'

Aratov was walking by her side, a little behind her; he could not see her
face; he saw only her hat and part of her veil ... and her long black
shabby cape. All his irritation, both with her and with himself, suddenly
came back to him; all the absurdity, the awkwardness of this interview,
these explanations between perfect strangers in a public promenade,
suddenly struck him.

'I have come on your invitation,' he began in his turn. 'I have come, my
dear madam' (her shoulders gave a faint twitch, she turned off into a side
passage, he followed her), 'simply to clear up, to discover to what strange
misunderstanding it is due that you are pleased to address me, a stranger
to you ... who ... only _guessed_, to use your expression in your letter,
that it was you writing to him ... guessed it because during that literary
matinee, you saw fit to pay him such ... such obvious attention.'