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Updated: May 22, 2025
"You have a cosy flat, but I am afraid it may be small for the two of us," she said, walking rapidly through all the rooms when they had finished breakfast. "What room will you give me? I like this one because it is next to your study." At one o'clock she changed her dress in the room next to the study, which from that time she called hers, and she went off with Orlov to lunch.
The trunks and baskets despatched by Orlov were standing in the passage, and my poor little portmanteau was there beside them. "So . . ." Zinaida Fyodorovna began, but she did not finish. We were silent.
Zinaida Fyodorovna impulsively embraced Orlov and kissed him on the cheek. "Only please don't cry," he said. "No, no. . . . I've had my cry, and now I am better." "As for the servant, she shall be gone to-morrow," he said, still moving uneasily in his chair. "No, she must stay, George! Do you hear? I am not afraid of her now. . . . One must rise above trifles and not imagine silly things.
More and more often I saw her tears. For the first weeks she laughed and sang to herself, even when Orlov was not at home, but by the second month there was a mournful stillness in our flat broken only on Thursday evenings. She flattered Orlov, and to wring from him a counterfeit smile or kiss, was ready to go on her knees to him, to fawn on him like a dog.
George, I'll begin with the question, when are you going to give up your post?" "What for?" asked Orlov, taking his hand from his forehead. "With your views you cannot remain in the service. You are out of place there." "My views?" Orlov repeated. "My views? In conviction and temperament I am an ordinary official, one of Shtchedrin's heroes.
Zinaida Fyodorovna said suddenly in Russian in a breaking voice. "What is it for? Think of my misery . . . ." Orlov, afraid of tears, went quickly into his study, and I don't know why whether it was that he wished to cause her extra pain, or whether he remembered it was usually done in such cases he locked the door after him. She cried out and ran after him with a rustle of her skirt.
Could it be Orlov, to whom perhaps Kukushkin had complained of me? How should we meet? I went to open the door. It was Polya. She came in shaking the snow off her pelisse, and went into her room without saying a word to me. When I went back to the drawing-room, Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale as death, was standing in the middle of the room, looking towards me with big eyes.
But before going I hurriedly sat down and began writing to Orlov: "I leave you my false passport," I began. "I beg you to keep it as a memento, you false man, you Petersburg official!
Then he let her come into the study and she had told him everything, had confessed that she loved some one else, that that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that she thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever might happen, if she were to be shot for it. "There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping his eyes fixed on the newspaper.
Two grown-up persons had to stand watching with the gravest attention a third drinking coffee and munching rusks. It was probably ludicrous and grotesque, but I saw nothing humiliating in having to stand near the door, though I was quite as well born and well educated as Orlov himself.
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