The Duel and other Stories

Ivan Andreitch Laevsky is an educated Russian aristocrat who has run off with a married woman, Nadyezyhda Fyodorovna (Nadya), to the Black Sea. He got a job in the civil service, but is careless about his work, mostly drinking and playing cards. By now he has fallen out of love and is bored with Nadya, who is having affairs with other men, and he wants to leave her. He receives a letter telling him that Nadya's husband has died (and therefore she is free to marry him). But he hides the letter in a book and doesn't tell Nadya. That, he says, would be like inviting her to marry him.
Laevsky confides his problem with Alexandr Daviditch Samoylenko, a military doctor, who has befriended Laevsky and looks after him. Samoylenko urges Laevsky to marry Nadya, even if he doesn't love her. Laevsky says he can't marry a woman he has no feeling for. But he can't leave her because she has no money, no relatives, and no means to survive. Samoylenko says that if he must leave her, he must do so humanely, by giving her enough money to live on. Laevsky says he is 2000 roubles in debt and can't afford to do that.

Contents:
The Duel
My Wife
Murder
The Black Monk
Terror
The Two Volodyas