The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

about for an hour and a half, looking for the side-street in which he had left his horses.

      "I am tired; I can scarcely stand on my legs," he said to Panteleimon.

      And settling himself with relief in his carriage, he thought: "Och! I ought not to get fat!"

      III

      The following evening he went to the Turkins' to make an offer. But it turned out to be an inconvenient moment, as Ekaterina Ivanovna was in her own room having her hair done by a hair-dresser. She was getting ready to go to a dance at the club.

      He had to sit a long time again in the dining-room drinking tea. Ivan Petrovitch, seeing that his visitor was bored and preoccupied, drew some notes out of his waistcoat pocket, read a funny letter from a German steward, saying that all the ironmongery was ruined and the plasticity was peeling off the walls.

      "I expect they will give a decent dowry," thought Startsev, listening absent-mindedly.

      After a sleepless night, he found himself in a state of stupefaction, as though he had been given something sweet and soporific to drink; there was fog in his soul, but joy and warmth, and at the same time a sort of cold, heavy fragment of his brain was reflecting: