Her thoughts were in a tangle.  She recalled, how, when she was a child of ten, Colonel Yagitch, now her husband, used to make love to her aunt, and every one in the house said that he had ruined her.  And her aunt had, in fact, often come down to dinner with her eyes red from crying, and was always going off somewhere; and people used to say of her that the poor thing could find no peace anywhere.  He had been very handsome in those days, and had an extraordinary reputation as a lady-killer.  So much so that he was known all over the town, and it was said of him that he paid a round of visits to his adorers every day like a doctor visiting his patients.  And even now, in spite of his grey hair, his wrinkles, and his spectacles, his thin face looked handsome, especially in profile.

Sofya Lvovna’s father was an army doctor, and had at one time served in the same regiment with Colonel Yagitch.  Volodya’s father was an army doctor too, and he, too, had once been in the same regiment as her father and Colonel Yagitch.  In spite of many amatory adventures, often very complicated and disturbing, Volodya had done splendidly at the university, and had taken a very good degree.  Now he was specialising in foreign literature, and was said to be writing a thesis.  He lived with his father, the army doctor, in the barracks, and had no means of his own, though he was thirty.  As children Sofya and he had lived under the same roof, though in different flats.  He often came to play with her, and they had dancing and French lessons together.  But when he grew up into a graceful, remarkably handsome young man, she began to feel shy of him, and then fell madly in love with him, and had loved him right up to the time when she was married to Yagitch.  He, too, had been renowned for his success with women almost from the age of fourteen, and the ladies who deceived their husbands on his account excused themselves by saying that he was only a boy.  Some one had told a story of him lately that when he was a student living in lodgings so as to be near the university, it always happened if one knocked at his door, that one heard his footstep, and then a whispered apology:  “Pardon, je ne suis pas setul.” Yagitch was delighted with him, and blessed him as a worthy successor, as Derchavin blessed Pushkin; he appeared to be fond of him.  They would play billiards or picquet by the hour together without uttering a word, if Yagitch drove out on any expedition he always took Volodya with him, and Yagitch was the only person Volodya initiated into the mysteries of his thesis.  In earlier days, when Yagitch was rather younger, they had often been in the position of rivals, but they had never been jealous of one another.  In the circle in which they moved Yagitch was nicknamed Big Volodya, and his friend Little Volodya.