A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step and seemed to be continually bowing.  Most likely this was the husband whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey.  And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey’s obsequiousness; his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of distinction like the number on a waiter.

During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained alone in her stall.  Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile: 

“Good-evening.”

She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror, unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint.  Both were silent.  She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her.  The violins and the flute began tuning up.  He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them.  She got up and went quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes.  They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco.  And Gurov, whose heart was beating violently, thought: 

“Oh, heavens!  Why are these people here and this orchestra! . . .”

And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would never meet again.  But how far they were still from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written “To the Amphitheatre,” she stopped.

“How you have frightened me!” she said, breathing hard, still pale and overwhelmed.  “Oh, how you have frightened me!  I am half dead.  Why have you come?  Why?”

“But do understand, Anna, do understand . . .” he said hastily in a low voice.  “I entreat you to understand. . . .”

She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.

“I am so unhappy,” she went on, not heeding him.  “I have thought of nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you.  And I wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?”

On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down, but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.

“What are you doing, what are you doing!” she cried in horror, pushing him away.  “We are mad.  Go away to-day; go away at once. . . .  I beseech you by all that is sacred, I implore you. . . .  There are people coming this way!”