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When Ariadne and I were fishing, Lubkov would lie on the sand close by and make fun of me, or lecture me on the conduct of life. "I wonder, my dear sir, how you can live without a love affair," he would say. "You are young, handsome, interesting in fact, you're a man not to be sniffed at, yet you live like a monk. Och! I can't stand these fellows who are old at twenty-eight!
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, and at once made a resolution to give up seeing them, to run away from them, to go home at once. . . . "To get on terms with a woman is easy enough," Lubkov went on. "You have only to undress her; but afterwards what a bore it is, what a silly business!"
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. "Persuade her. . . . Impress her mind. . . . Just consider, what is Lubkov to her? Is he a match for her? Oh, good God!
Peter's, and thanks to our replete condition and perhaps the bad weather, it made no sort of impression on us, and detecting in each other an indifference to art, we almost quarrelled. The money came from my father. I went to get it, I remember, in the morning. Lubkov went with me. "The present cannot be full and happy when one has a past," said he. "I have heavy burdens left on me by the past.
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.
A man ought to be able to be carried away by his feelings, he ought to be able to be mad, to make mistakes, to suffer! A woman will forgive you audacity and insolence, but she will never forgive your reasonableness!" She was angry in earnest, and went on: "To succeed, a man must be resolute and bold. Lubkov is not so handsome as you are, but he is more interesting.
My subjection was not enough, and at nights, stretched out like a tigress, uncovered she was always too hot she would read the letters sent her by Lubkov; he besought her to return to Russia, vowing if she did not he would rob or murder some one to get the money to come to her. She hated him, but his passionate, slavish letters excited her.
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.
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 naïvely as a schoolboy.
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