He recalled his entry into society, and a friend's sister with whom he spent several evenings at a table with a lamp on it which lit up her slender fingers busy with needlework, and the lower part of her pretty delicate face.

He recalled their conversations that dragged on like the game in which one passes on a stick which one keeps alight as long as possible, and the general awkwardness and restraint and his continual feeling of rebellion at all that conventionality.

Some voice had always whispered: "That's not it, that's not it," and so it had proved.

Then he remembered a ball and the mazurka he danced with the beautiful D----.

"How much in love I was that night and how happy! And how hurt and vexed I was next morning when I woke and felt myself still free! Why does not love come and bind me hand and foot ?" thought he.
"No, there is no such thing as love! That neighbour who used to tell me, as she told Dubrovin and the Marshal, that she loved the stars, was not IT either." And now his farming and work in the country recurred to his mind, and in those recollections also there was nothing to dwell on with pleasure.