"'God ... sent ... a crow,'" she said in a loud, emphatic voice, probably dictating.... "'God sent a crow a piece of cheese.... A crow ... a piece of cheese ... Who's there?' she called suddenly, hearing my steps.
"'It's I.'
"'Ah! Excuse me. I cannot come out to you this minute: I'm giving Dasha her lesson.'
"'Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?'
"'No, she went away with my sister this morning to our aunt in the province of Penza. And in the winter they will probably go abroad,' she added after a pause. 'God sent ... the crow ... a piece ... of cheese.... Have you written it?'
"I went into the hall and stared vacantly at the pond and the village, and the sound reached me of 'A piece of cheese ... God sent the crow a piece of cheese.'"
In Three Years, a somewhat longer tale, we read of the gradually waning affection between husband and wife and their reconciliation.
Very deftly does the author show us the difference between the passion which Laptev felt for Yulia at the beginning and his feeling at the end when she tells him how dear he is to her: though he kept smiling at her and her beautiful neck with a sort of joyous shyness as a sign of the new birth of his love, yet we read that when she put her arm round his neck he cautiously removed her hand. The mingled emotions are exquisitely rendered.
His longest story is The Duel and in it we hear of a neurasthenic, Laevsky, who finds that "'living with a woman who has read Spencer and followed you to the ends of the earth is no more interesting than living with any Anfissa or Kulina. There's the same smell of ironing, of powder, and of medicines, the same curl-papers every morning, the same self-deception.'" He tries every means in his power to raise money by loan to leave the Caucasus and his mistress: there is a clear-headed, cold-blooded zoologist called Von Koren who despises Laevsky for his degeneracy. He thus analyses Laevsky's character:
"'His existence is confined like an egg within its shell. Whether he walks or sits, is angry, writes, rejoices, it may all be reduced to wine, cards, slippers and women. He has had great success with women and therein lies his noxiousness. He is a failure, a superfluous man, a victim of the age.'" Meanwhile Laevsky's mistress had been philandering with other men. He discovers her infidelity just when he is on the point of fighting a duel with Von Koren. He was wounded but slightly and became reconciled to his wife, while Von Koren was the one to go away, leaving lover and mistress almost happy in each other's society.