With the awkwardness of a man with settled habits, unaccustomed to deal with women, Modest Alexeitch touched her on the waist and patted her on the shoulder, while she went on thinking about money, about her mother and her mother’s death.  When her mother died, her father, Pyotr Leontyitch, a teacher of drawing and writing in the high school, had taken to drink, impoverishment had followed, the boys had not had boots or goloshes, their father had been hauled up before the magistrate, the warrant officer had come and made an inventory of the furniture. . . .  What a disgrace!  Anna had had to look after her drunken father, darn her brothers’ stockings, go to market, and when she was complimented on her youth, her beauty, and her elegant manners, it seemed to her that every one was looking at her cheap hat and the holes in her boots that were inked over.  And at night there had been tears and a haunting dread that her father would soon, very soon, be dismissed from the school for his weakness, and that he would not survive it, but would die, too, like their mother.  But ladies of their acquaintance had taken the matter in hand and looked about for a good match for Anna.  This Modest Alexevitch, who was neither young nor good-looking but had money, was soon found.  He had a hundred thousand in the bank and the family estate, which he had let on lease.  He was a man of principle and stood well with His Excellency; it would be nothing to him, so they told Anna, to get a note from His Excellency to the directors of the high school, or even to the Education Commissioner, to prevent Pyotr Leontyitch from being dismissed.

While she was recalling these details, she suddenly heard strains of music which floated in at the window, together with the sound of voices.  The train was stopping at a station.  In the crowd beyond the platform an accordion and a cheap squeaky fiddle were being briskly played, and the sound of a military band came from beyond the villas and the tall birches and poplars that lay bathed in the moonlight; there must have been a dance in the place.  Summer visitors and townspeople, who used to come out here by train in fine weather for a breath of fresh air, were parading up and down on the platform.  Among them was the wealthy owner of all the summer villas—­a tall, stout, dark man called Artynov.  He had prominent eyes and looked like an Armenian.  He wore a strange costume; his shirt was unbuttoned, showing his chest; he wore high boots with spurs, and a black cloak hung from his shoulders and dragged on the ground like a train.  Two boar-hounds followed him with their sharp noses to the ground.

Tears were still shining in Anna’s eyes, but she was not thinking now of her mother, nor of money, nor of her marriage; but shaking hands with schoolboys and officers she knew, she laughed gaily and said quickly: 

“How do you do?  How are you?”

She went out on to the platform between the carriages into the moonlight, and stood so that they could all see her in her new splendid dress and hat.