Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, mining engineer and married man,
and Olya Andreevna Golovkina!
* * * * * * *
She was a school teacher, who, after passing through the eight
classes of her college, now resided with her aunt. She was always
known as Olya Golovkina, although she bore the ancient Russian
surname made famous in the time of Peter the Great by Senator
Golovkin. But even in the time of Peter the Great this name had sunk
into the gutter and had left in this town a street Golovkinskaya, and
in that same Golovkinskaya Street a house, by the letting of which
Olya's aunt made her living.
Agrenev knew that the aunt--whose name he had never heard--was an old
maid, and that she had one joy--Olya. He knew she sat at her window
without a lamp throughout the evenings, waiting for Olya; and that
for this reason her niece, on leaving him, went round by the back-
way, in order to obviate suspicion.
Nothing was ever said of the aunt in a personal way; the name was
uttered only indirectly, as though applying to a substance and not to
a human being.
Olya was a very charming girl, of whom it was difficult to say
anything definite: such a pretty provincial maid, like a slender
willow-reed.
The town lay over hillocks and fields and the ancient quarries, all
its energies flowing out from the factory at the further end--and a
casual conversation which occured in the spring at the beginning of
Agrenev's acquaintance with Olya was characteristic alike of the town
and of her.
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