"Come back, then, and take lunch with me. I should like to have a talk with you, for I have just experienced two misfortunes."
"Impossible, I fear, for I am lunching with Prince Tiumenev. All the Gorunovs—yes, and Lydia, too—are to be there. What a cheerful house it is! And so is Tiumenev's country place. I have heard that it is to be the scene of numberless dances and tableaux this summer. Are you likely to be one of the guests?"
"No—I think not."
"What hospitality the Prince dispenses! This winter his guests averaged fifty, and sometimes a hundred."
"How wearisome the whole thing must have been!"
"What! Wearisome? Why, the more the merrier. Lydia, too, used to be there—though in those days I never so much as noticed her. In fact, never once did I do so until one day I found myself 'vainly trying to forget her, vainly pitting reason in the lists with love.'" Volkov hummed the concluding words, and seated himself carelessly upon a chair. Almost instantly he leaped to his feet again, and brushed the dust from his trousers.
