, or is eager for the emancipation of women, I assure you there is no affectation about it. But the trouble is that when we have been married or been intimate with a woman for some two or three years, we begin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off with others, and again⁠—disappointment, again⁠—repulsion, and in the long run we become convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undeveloped, cruel⁠—in fact, far from being superior, are immeasurably inferior to us men. And in our dissatisfaction and disappointment there is nothing left for us but to grumble and talk about what we’ve been so cruelly deceived in.”

While Shamohin was talking I noticed that the Russian language and our Russian surroundings gave him great pleasure. This was probably because he had been very homesick abroad. Though he praised the Russians and ascribed to them a rare idealism, he did not disparage foreigners, and that I put down to his credit. It could be seen, too, that there was some uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to talk more of himself than of women, and that I was in for a long story in the nature of a confession. And when we had asked for a bottle of wine and had each of us drunk a glass, this was how he did in fact begin:

“I remember in a novel of Weltmann’s someone says, ‘So that’s the story!’ and someone else answers, ‘No, that’s not the story⁠—that’s only the introduction to the story.’ In the same way what I’ve said so far is only the introduction; what I really want to tell you is my own love story. Excuse me, I must ask you again; it won’t bore you to listen?”

I told him it would not, and he went on: