He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one.  But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the bank.  And what had he to talk of?  Had he been in love, then?  Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna?  And there was nothing for him but to talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said: 

“The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri.”

One evening, coming out of the doctors’ club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying: 

“If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!”

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted: 

“Dmitri Dmitritch!”

“What?”

“You were right this evening:  the sturgeon was a bit too strong!”

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean.  What savage manners, what people!  What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days!  The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing.  Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one’s time, the better part of one’s strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—­just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation.  And he had a headache all next day.  And the next night he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room.  He was sick of his children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.

In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young friend—­and he set off for S——.  What for?  He did not very well know himself.  He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her—­to arrange a meeting, if possible.

He reached S——­ in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with its hat in its hand and its head broken off.  The hotel porter gave him the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in Old Gontcharny Street—­it was not far from the hotel:  he was rich and lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew him.  The porter pronounced the name “Dridirits.”

Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house.  Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.