The panelled walls and the stove with its cracked tiles were only faintly visible in the soft which filled Ivanov's study. By the walls stood a sofa, and a desk whose green cloth was untidily bestrewn with the accumulated litter of years and with candle grease, reminiscent of the long, nights Ivanov had spent—a to loneliness.  
A heap of horse trappings—collars, , saddles, bridles—lay by the large, square, bare windows. During the winter nights wolves watched the gleam of yellow candlelight within them. Now outside was the , atmosphere of Spring with all its multi-coloured splendour. Against a deep-blue sky with an orange like a pencil line across the horizon, showed the sharp, knotted of the crotegus and the lilac beneath the windows.
 
Ivanov lighted a candle and commenced manufacturing to pass away the time. Lydia Constantinovna entered the room.
 
"Will you have tea here or in the dining-room?" she inquired.
 
Ivanov declined tea with a wave of his hand.
 
All through the years of the Revolution Lydia Constantinovna had lived in the Crimea, coming to Marin-Brod for a fortnight the previous summer, afterwards leaving for Moscow. Now she had returned for the Easter holidays, but not alone—the artist Mintz accompanied her. Ivanov had never heard of him before.
 
Mintz was clean-shaven and had long fair hair; he wore steel-rimmed pince-nez over his cold grey eyes which he often took off and put on again; when he did so his eyes changed, looking helpless and without the glasses, like those of little owlets in daylight; his thin, shaven lips were closely compressed, and there was often an expression of mistrust and in his face; his conversation and movements were noisy.
 
Lydia Constantinovna had arrived with Mintz the day before at dusk; Ivanov was not at home. They had gone for a walk in the evening, returning only at two o'clock when dawn was just about to break, and a cold mist hung over the earth like a soft grey veil. They were met by barking dogs which were quickly silenced by the of Ignat's whip.
 
Ivanov had come home earlier, at eleven o'clock, and sat by his study window alone, listening to the gentle sounds of night and the ceaseless hootings of the in the park. Lydia Constantinovna did not come to him, nor did he go in to her.
 
It was in the daytime that Ivanov first saw the artist. Mintz was sitting in the park on a dried turf-bench, and gazing intently at the river. Ivanov passed him. The artist's shrunken figure had an air of desolation and abandonment.
 
The drawing-room was next to Ivanov's study. There still remained out of the ruin a carpet and some armchairs near the large, dirty windows, an old piano stood unmoved, and some portraits still hung on the walls.
 
Lydia Constantinovna and Mintz came in from the back-room. Lydia walked with her usual brisk, even tread, carrying herself with the smooth, bearing and swing of her beautiful body that Ivanov remembered so well.
 
She raised the piano-cover and began playing a dashing that was strikingly out of place in the room, then she closed the piano-lid with a slam.
 
Aganka entered with the tea on a tray.
 
Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the floor, and though he loudly, his voice held a note of pain.
 
"I was in the park just now. That pond, those avenues— , dying, disappearing—drive me mad. The ice has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back the rom............