‘You didn’t expect me?’ she said, hardly able to draw her breath, she had run quickly up the stairs. ‘Dear one! dear one!--so this is where you live? I’ve quickly found you. The daughter of your landlord conducted me. We arrived the day before yesterday. I meant to write to you, but I thought I had better come myself. I have come for a quarter of an hour. Get up, shut the door.’ He got up, quickly shut the door, returned to her and took her by the hands. He could not speak; he was choking with delight. She looked with a smile into his eyes... there was such rapture in them... she felt shy. ‘Stay,’ she said, fondly taking her hand away from him, ‘let me take off my hat.’ She untied the strings of her hat, flung it down, slipped the cape off her shoulders, tidied her hair, and sat down on the little old sofa. Insarov gazed at her, without stirring, like one enchanted. ‘Sit down,’ she said, not lifting her eyes to him and motioning him to a place beside her. Insarov sat down, not on the sofa, but on the floor at her feet. ‘Come, take off my gloves,’ she said in an uncertain voice. She felt afraid. He began first to unbutton and then to draw off one glove; he drew it half off and greedily pressed his lips to the slender, soft wrist, which was white under it. Elena shuddered, and would have pushed him back with the other hand; he began kissing the other hand too. Elena drew it away, he threw back his head, she looked into his face, bent above him, and their lips touched. An instant passed... she broke away, got up, whispered ‘No, no,’ and went quickly up to the writing-table. ‘I am mistress here, you know, so you ought not to have any secrets from me,’ she said, trying to seem at ease, and standing with her back to him. ‘What a lot of papers! what are these letters?’ Insarov knitted his brows. ‘Those letters?’ he said, getting up, ‘you can read them.’ Elena turned them over in her hand. ‘There are so many of them, and the writing is so fine, and I have to go directly... let them be. They’re not from a rival, eh?... and they’re not in Russian,’ she added, turning over the thin sheets. Insarov came close to her and fondly touched her waist. She turned suddenly to him, smiled brightly at him and leant against his shoulder. ‘Those letters are from Bulgaria, Elena; my friends write to me, they want me to come.’ ‘Now? To them?’ ‘Yes... now, while there is still time, while it is still possible to come.’ All at once she flung both arms round his neck, ‘You will take me with you, yes?’ He pressed her to his heart. ‘O my sweet girl, O my heroine, how you said that! But isn’t it wicked, isn’t it mad for me, a homeless, solitary man, to drag you with me... and out there too!’ She shut his mouth.... ‘Sh--or I shall be angry, and never come to see you again. Why isn’t it all decided, all settled between us? Am I not your wife? Can a wife be parted from her husband?’ ‘Wives don’t go into war,’ he said with a half-mournful smile.