In childhood, as a small lad, Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev had heard from listening to his mother's conversation how—lo and ! one morning at 9 o'clock Nina Kallistratovna Zamotkina had proceeded with her daughter to Doctor Chasovnikov's flat, in order to deliver a slap in the face to his wife for having broken up the family by a with Paul Alexander Zamotkin, Nina Kallistratovna's husband.  
The child Agrenev had pictured to himself how Nina Kallistratovna had walked, holding her daughter with one hand, an attaché-case in the other: of course her bearing must have been singular, as she was going to the flat to administer a slap in the face; no doubt she had walked either in a or a bandy-legged fashion. The family hearth must have been something extremely valuable, as she was going to deliver a slap in the face on its account—perhaps it was some kind of stove.
 
It was highly interesting—in the child's imagination—to picture Nina Kallistratovna entering the flat, swinging back her arm, and delivering the slap: her gait, her arms, the flat—all had a sudden hidden and exceedingly curious meaning for the child.
 
This had remained out of his childhood memories of the little town and province, where all had seemed unusual as childhood itself.
 
Now in the Wolf's Ravine Agrenev recalled this incident, and he brooded bitterly over the certainty that no one would ever deliver a slap in the face on his account! What vulgarity—slaps in the face!… and a slap in the face was no solution.
 
It was now autumn, and as he stood in the ravine waiting for Olya, the cranes flew low over his head, stretching themselves out like arrows and crying . A wintry sulphurous light overspread the eastern sky, and the blue of the Vega shone out above him tremendous and , up into the very heart of the flaming sunset.
 
On a sudden, Olya arrived, her figure darkly an instant— a tiny atom—against the vastness of the hill and sky as she stood on the of the ravine; then she clambered down its precipitous side to Agrenev.
 
Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, mining engineer and married man, and Olya Andreevna Golovkina!
 
She was a school teacher, who, after passing through the eight classes of her college, now resided with her aunt. She was always known as Olya Golovkina, although she bore the ancient Russian surname made famous in the time of Peter the Great by Senator Golovkin. But even in the time of Peter the Great this name had sunk into the and had left in this town a street Golovkinskaya, and in that same Golovkinskaya Street a house, by the letting of which Olya's aunt made her living.
 
Agrenev knew that the aunt—whose name he had never heard—was an old maid, and that she had one joy—Olya. He knew she sat at her window without a lamp throughout the evenings, waiting for Olya; and that for this reason her niece, on leaving him, went round by the back- way, in order to suspicion.
 
Nothing was ever said of the aunt in a personal way; the name was uttered only , as though applying to a substance and not to a human being.
 
Olya was a very charming girl, of whom it was difficult to say anything definite: such a pretty maid, like a slender willow-reed.
 
The town lay over hillocks and fields and the ancient , all its energies flowing out from the factory at the further end—and a casual conversation which occured in the spring at the beginning of Agrenev's acquaintance with Olya was characteristic alike of the town and of her. Agrenev had said of something:
 
"Balmont, Blok, Brusov, Sologub…"
 
She interrupted him hastily—a slender little reed: "As a whole I know little of foreign writers …"
 
In the town—neither in the high-school, the library, nor the newspapers—did they know of Balmont or Blok, but Olya loved to declaim by from Kozlov, and she French.
 
The factory lived its dark, noisy, unwholesome life sunk in poverty beneath the surface, steeped in luxury above; the little town lived amid the fields, scared and pressed down by the factory, but still carrying on its own individual life.
 
Beyond it, on the side away from the factory, lay the pass called the Wolf's Ravine. On the right, close to the river, was a where couples walked. They never to the ravine, because it was so unpoetic, a treeless, shallow, dull, unterrifying spot. Yet it skirted the hills, dominated the surrounding country; and people lying flat in the channel at its summit could survey the locality for a mile round without being seen themselves.
 
Alexander Alexandrovitch was a married man. The shepherd lads tending their at pasture began to notice how every evening a man on a bicycle turned off the main road into the ravine, and how—soon after—a girl hurried past them following in his steps, like a reed blown in the wind. As befitted their kind, the shepherds cried out every abomination after her.
 
All the summer Olya had begged Agrenev to bring her books to read; she did not notice, however, that he had never once brought her any!
 
Then one evening, early in September, after a spell of rain which had prevented their meeting for some days, there happened that which was bound to happen—which happens to a only once in her life. They used always to meet at eight, but eight in September was not like eight in June. The rain was over, but a chill, , autumnal wind remained. The sky was with heavy, leaden clouds; it was cold and wretched. That evening the cranes flew southward, gabbling in the............