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 naively as a schoolboy.

Not from jealousy, but from a foreboding of something terrible and extraordinary, I tried as far as possible not to leave them alone together, and they made fun of me. For instance, when I went in they would pretend they had just been kissing one another, and so on. But lo and behold, one fine morning, her plump, white-skinned brother, the spiritualist, made his appearance and expressed his desire to speak to me alone.

He was a man without will; in spite of his education and his delicacy he could never resist reading another person’s letter, if it lay before him on the table. And now he admitted that he had by chance read a letter of Lubkov’s to Ariadne.

“From that letter I learned that she is very shortly going abroad. My dear fellow, I am very much upset! Explain it to me for goodness’ sake. I can make nothing of it!”

As he said this he breathed hard, breathing straight in my face and smelling of boiled beef.

“Excuse me for revealing the secret of this letter to you, but you are Ariadne’s friend, she respects you. 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!”