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'My son,' he wrote to me, 'fear the love of woman; fear that bliss, that poison...' After his death, my mother sent a considerable sum of money to Moscow.

Four years passed.

I had just left the university, and did not know exactly what to do with myself, at what door to knock; I was hanging about for a time with nothing to do.

One fine evening I met Meidanov at the theatre.

He had got married, and had entered the civil service; but I found no change in him.

He fell into ecstasies in just the same superfluous way, and just as suddenly grew depressed again.

'You know,' he told me among other things, 'Madame Dolsky's here.'

'What Madame Dolsky?'

'Can you have forgotten her? – the young Princess Zasyekin whom we were all in love with, and you too. Do you remember at the country-house near Neskutchny gardens?'

'She married a Dolsky?'

'Yes.'

'And is she here, in the theatre?'

'No: but she's in Petersburg. She came here a few days ago. She's going abroad.'

'What sort of fellow is her husband?' I asked.

'A splendid fellow, with property.

He's a colleague of mine in Moscow.

You can well understand – after the scandal ... you must know all about it ... ' (Meidanov smiled significantly) 'it was no easy task for her to make a good marriage; there were consequences ... but with her cleverness, everything is possible.

Go and see her; she'll be delighted to see you.

She's prettier than ever.'

Meidanov gave me Zinaida's address.

She was staying at the Hotel Demut.

Old memories were astir within me...

I determined next day to go to see my former 'flame.' But some business happened to turn up; a week passed, and then another, and when at last I went to the Hotel Demut and asked for Madame Dolsky, I learnt that four days before, she had died, almost suddenly, in childbirth.

I felt a sort of stab at my heart.

Chapter XXII

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