After Lubkov had gone away she had borrowed from her acquaintances about five thousand francs, and my arrival certainly was the one salvation for her.

I had reckoned on taking her back to the country, but I did not succeed in that.  She was homesick for her native place, but her recollections of the poverty she had been through there, of privations, of the rusty roof on her brother’s house, roused a shudder of disgust, and when I suggested going home to her, she squeezed my hands convulsively and said: 

“No, no, I shall die of boredom there!”

Then my love entered upon its final phase.

“Be the darling that you used to be; love me a little,” said Ariadne, bending over to me.  “You’re sulky and prudent, you’re afraid to yield to impulse, and keep thinking of consequences, and that’s dull.  Come, I beg you, I beseech you, be nice to me! . . .  My pure one, my holy one, my dear one, I love you so!”

I became her lover.  For a month anyway I was like a madman, conscious of nothing but rapture.  To hold in one’s arms a young and lovely body, with bliss to feel her warmth every time one waked up from sleep, and to remember that she was there—­she, my Ariadne!—­ oh, it was not easy to get used to that!  But yet I did get used to it, and by degrees became capable of reflecting on my new position.  First of all, I realised, as before, that Ariadne did not love me.  But she wanted to be really in love, she was afraid of solitude, and, above all, I was healthy, young, vigorous; she was sensual, like all cold people, as a rule—­and we both made a show of being united by a passionate, mutual love.  Afterwards I realised something else, too.

We stayed in Rome, in Naples, in Florence; we went to Paris, but there we thought it cold and went back to Italy.  We introduced ourselves everywhere as husband and wife, wealthy landowners.  People readily made our acquaintance and Ariadne had great social success everywhere.  As she took lessons in painting, she was called an artist, and only imagine, that quite suited her, though she had not the slightest trace of talent.

She would sleep every day till two or three o’clock; she had her coffee and lunch in bed.  At dinner she would eat soup, lobster, fish, meat, asparagus, game, and after she had gone to bed I used to bring up something, for instance roast beef, and she would eat it with a melancholy, careworn expression, and if she waked in the night she would eat apples and oranges.

The chief, so to say fundamental, characteristic of the woman was an amazing duplicity.  She was continually deceitful every minute, apparently apart from any necessity, as it were by instinct, by an impulse such as makes the sparrow chirrup and the cockroach waggle its antennae.  She was deceitful with me, with the footman, with the porter, with the tradesmen in the shops, with her acquaintances; not one conversation, not one meeting, took place without affectation and