“I don’t understand,” he said softly. “What is it you want?”

She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.

“Believe me, believe me, I beseech you⁠ ⁠…” she said. “I love a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don’t know what I am doing. Simple people say: ‘The Evil One has beguiled me.’ And I may say of myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me.”

“Hush, hush!⁠ ⁠…” he muttered.

He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety returned; they both began laughing.

Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the seafront. The town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.

They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.

“I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the board⁠—Von Diderits,” said Gurov. “Is your husband a German?”

“No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox Russian himself.”