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Gurov looked at her and thought: "What different people one meets in the world!"
And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or three months she left S , telling her husband that she was going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint and her husband believed her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
She talked a great deal and asked disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then she dropped her lorgnette in the crush. The festive crowd began to disperse; it was too dark to see people's faces. The wind had completely dropped, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna still stood as though waiting to see some one else come from the steamer.
All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had unintentionally deceived her. . . . Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold evening. "It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform. "High time!"
I told my husband I was ill, and came here. . . . And here I have been walking about as though I were dazed, like a mad creature; . . . and now I have become a vulgar, contemptible woman whom any one may despise." Gurov felt bored already, listening to her.
These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing.
Anna Sergeyevna was touching; there was about her the purity of a good, simple woman who had seen little of life. The solitary candle burning on the table threw a faint light on her face, yet it was clear that she was very unhappy. "How could I despise you?" asked Gurov. "You don't know what you are saying." "God forgive me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It's awful."
It was a holiday. It was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust round and round, and blew people's hats off. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov often went into the pavilion, and pressed Anna Sergeyevna to have syrup and water or an ice. One did not know what to do with oneself.
Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to Moscow. But now let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!" She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy. Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died away, he found his coat and left the theatre.
Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.
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