our years passed. I had just left the university, and did not know exactly what to do with myself, at what door to knock; I was hanging about for a time with nothing to do. One fine evening I met Meidanov at the theatre. He had got married, and had entered the civil service; but I found no change in him. He fell into ecstasies in just the same superfluous way, and just as suddenly grew depressed again.

‘You know,’ he told me among other things, ‘Madame Dolsky’s here.’

‘What Madame Dolsky?’

‘Can you have forgotten her? – the young Princess Zasyekin whom we were all in love with, and you too. Do you remember at the country-house near Neskutchny gardens?’

‘She married a Dolsky?’