One day at supper she began saying, not addressing me, that if she were a man she would not stagnate in the country, but would travel, would spend the winter somewhere aboard—­in Italy, for instance.  Oh, Italy!  At this point my father unconsciously poured oil on the flames; he began telling us at length about Italy, how splendid it was there, the exquisite scenery, the museums.  Ariadne suddenly conceived a burning desire to go to Italy.  She positively brought her fist down on the table and her eyes flashed as she said:  “I must go!”

After that came conversations every day about Italy:  how splendid it would be in Italy—­ah, Italy!—­oh, Italy!  And when Ariadne looked at me over her shoulder, from her cold and obstinate expression I saw that in her dreams she had already conquered Italy with all its salons, celebrated foreigners and tourists, and there was no holding her back now.  I advised her to wait a little, to put off her tour for a year or two, but she frowned disdainfully and said: 

“You’re as prudent as an old woman!”

Lubkov was in favour of the tour.  He said it could be done very cheaply, and he, too, would go to Italy and have a rest there from family life.

I behaved, I confess, as naively as a schoolboy.

Not from jealousy, but from a foreboding of something terrible and extraordinary, I tried as far as possible not to leave them alone together, and they made fun of me.  For instance, when I went in they would pretend they had just been kissing one another, and so on.  But lo and behold, one fine morning, her plump, white-skinned brother, the spiritualist, made his appearance and expressed his desire to speak to me alone.

He was a man without will; in spite of his education and his delicacy he could never resist reading another person’s letter, if it lay before him on the table.  And now he admitted that he had by chance read a letter of Lubkov’s to Ariadne.

“From that letter I learned that she is very shortly going abroad.  My dear fellow, I am very much upset!  Explain it to me for goodness’ sake.  I can make nothing of it!”

As he said this he breathed hard, breathing straight in my face and smelling of boiled beef.

“Excuse me for revealing the secret of this letter to you, but you are Ariadne’s friend, she respects you.  Perhaps you know something of it.  She wants to go away, but with whom?  Mr. Lubkov is proposing to go with her.  Excuse me, but this is very strange of Mr. Lubkov; he is a married man, he has children, and yet he is making a declaration of love; he is writing to Ariadne ‘darling.’  Excuse me, but it is so strange!”

I turned cold all over; my hands and feet went numb and I felt an ache in my chest, as if a three-cornered stone had been driven into it.  Kotlovitch sank helplessly into an easy-chair, and his hands fell limply at his sides.

“What can I do?” I inquired.