any kind of preface, I handed Andrei Varia's note.

Kolosov looked at me in perplexity, tore open the note, ran his eyes
over it, said nothing, but smiled composedly. 'Oh, ho!' he said at
last; 'so you've been at Ivan Semyonitch's?'

'Yes, I was there yesterday, alone,' I answered abruptly and
resolutely.

'Ah!...' observed Kolosov ironically, and he lighted his pipe.
'Andrei,' I said to him, 'aren't you sorry for her?... If you had seen
her tears...'

And I launched into an eloquent description of my visit of the previous
day. I was genuinely moved. Kolosov did not speak, and smoked his pipe.

'You sat with her under the apple-tree in the garden,' he said at last.
'I remember in May I, too, used to sit with her on that seat.... The
apple-tree was in blossom, the fresh white flowers fell upon us
sometimes; I held both Varia's hands... we were happy then.... Now the
apple-blossom is over, and the apples on the tree are sour.'

I flew into a passion of noble indignation, began reproaching Andrei
for coldness, for cruelty, argued with him that he had no right to
abandon a girl so suddenly, after awakening in her a multitude of new
emotions; I begged him at least to go and say good-bye to Varia.
Kolosov heard me to the end.

'Admitting,' he said to me, when, agitated and exhausted, I flung
myself into an armchair, 'that you, as my friend, may be allowed to