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"She has a fine voice," replied Arátoff, "but she does not know how to sing yet, she has had no real school." Kupfer was surprised. "She has no school," he repeated slowly.... "Well, now.... She can still study. But on the other hand, what soul! But just wait until thou hast heard her recite Tatyána's letter." He ran away from Arátoff, and the latter thought: "Soul! With that impassive face!"
Braga's "Serenade" was the fashion at that time, and Chekhov was fond of hearing Potapenko play it on the violin while Miss Mizinov sang it. Having been a student at the Moscow University, Chekhov liked to celebrate St. Tatyana's Day. He never missed making a holiday of it when he lived in Moscow. That winter, for the first time, he chanced to be in Petersburg on the 12th of January.
When, a little later, my mother ran into the lodge, Fyodor and Pobyedimsky were still hammering on the table like blacksmiths and repeating, "I won't allow it!" "What has happened here?" asked mother. "Why has my brother been taken ill? What's the matter?" Looking at Tatyana's pale, frightened face and at her infuriated husband, mother probably guessed what was the matter.
And he was at Baden, also, because Tatyana's aunt, Kapitolina Markovna Shestov, an old unmarried lady of fifty-five, a good-natured, honest, eccentric soul a democrat, sworn opponent of aristocracy and fashionable society could not resist the temptation of gazing for once on the aristocratic society which sunned itself in such a fashionable place as Baden.
I should push you away; I am ruined, Tatyana, I am ruined past all help." Tatyana's brow twitched. Her pale face darkened. "Since you say yourself this passion is unalterable, it only remains for me to give you back your word. I will ask you to leave me. I want to collect myself a little.... Leave me alone... spare my pride." Uttering these words, Tatyana hurriedly withdrew into an inner room.
Then Arátoff got Púshkin and read Tatyána's letter and again felt convinced that that "gipsy" had not in the least grasped the meaning of the letter. But there was that jester Kupfer shouting: "A Rachel! A Viardot!"
As soon as she reached her own room she threw off her dress, let down her hair, and in her petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat down to the table to write a letter like Tatyana's. "I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love me!" She wrote it and laughed. She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone.
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