I had never cared for visitors before, but now I was glad of them, for I knew there was sure to be talk of Ariadne.  Kotlovitch, the spiritualist, used often to come to talk about his sister, and sometimes he brought with him his friend Prince Maktuev, who was as much in love with Ariadne as I was.  To sit in Ariadne’s room, to finger the keys of her piano, to look at her music was a necessity for the prince—­he could not live without it; and the spirit of his grandfather Ilarion was still predicting that sooner or later she would be his wife.  The prince usually stayed a long time with us, from lunch to midnight, saying nothing all the time; in silence he would drink two or three bottles of beer, and from time to time, to show that he too was taking part in the conversation, he would laugh an abrupt, melancholy, foolish laugh.  Before going home he would always take me aside and ask me in an undertone:  “When did you see Ariadne Grigoryevna last?  Was she quite well?  I suppose she’s not tired of being out there?”

Spring came on.  There was the harrowing to do and then the sowing of spring corn and clover.  I was sad, but there was the feeling of spring.  One longed to accept the inevitable.  Working in the fields and listening to the larks, I asked myself:  “Couldn’t I have done with this question of personal happiness once and for all?  Couldn’t I lay aside my fancy and marry a simple peasant girl?”

Suddenly when we were at our very busiest, I got a letter with the Italian stamp, and the clover and the beehives and the calves and the peasant girl all floated away like smoke.  This time Ariadne wrote that she was profoundly, infinitely unhappy.  She reproached me for not holding out a helping hand to her, for looking down upon her from the heights of my virtue and deserting her at the moment of danger.  All this was written in a large, nervous handwriting with blots and smudges, and it was evident that she wrote in haste and distress.  In conclusion she besought me to come and save her.  Again my anchor was hauled up and I was carried away.  Ariadne was in Rome.  I arrived late in the evening, and when she saw me, she sobbed and threw herself on my neck.  She had not changed at all that winter, and was just as young and charming.  We had supper together and afterwards drove about Rome until dawn, and all the time she kept telling me about her doings.  I asked where Lubkov was.

“Don’t remind me of that creature!” she cried.  “He is loathsome and disgusting to me!”

“But I thought you loved him,” I said.

“Never,” she said.  “At first he struck me as original and aroused my pity, that was all.  He is insolent and takes a woman by storm.  And that’s attractive.  But we won’t talk about him.  That is a melancholy page in my life.  He has gone to Russia to get money.  Serve him right!  I told him not to dare to come back.”

She was living then, not at an hotel, but in a private lodging of two rooms which she had decorated in her own taste, frigidly and luxuriously.