At eleven o'clock in the evening the fast train Moscow-Sevastopol stops at a small station. In the first-class carriage, a gentleman and a lady — a husband and a wife — approach the window. He leans on the window, she is on his shoulder.

The gentleman says that he once lived in this area on vacation - he was a tutor in a summer cottage. He recalls a boring area, a very desolate and poor house in the Russian summer cottage style, behind the house there is an equally neglected garden, and behind it is either a lake, or a swamp with a punt near the swampy shore. On it, the gentleman rolled at night a girl in a poor chintz dress and peasant chunk on her bare foot.

The girl Maroussia, who in the family was called Russe, was an artist, studied at the Stroganov School of Painting. She herself was picturesque: a long black braid, a swarthy face with small dark moles, a narrow regular nose, black eyes and eyebrows and slightly curly hair.

The girl "looked like a mother on her face, and her mother, a kind of princess with eastern blood, suffered from something like black melancholy." Father is a retired military man, "also silent and dry." Simple and sweet was only their son, whom the narrator taught.

The wife asks if her companion was in love with Russia. He answers - terribly. Russia was also in love with him, or it seemed to her.The gentleman offers the lady to go to sleep, but she wants to know how this novel ended. He replies that he simply left, and did not marry because he foresaw a meeting with his wife.

And the wife falls asleep, but he does not sleep, smokes and remembers that summer.

At first, Rusia looked at him, then began to talk. Finally, invited him to ride on the lake. The boat was rotten, with a holey, carelessly sealed bottom and one oar.

The narrator asked Rus to put his cap on the bench, but the girl pressed him to her chest and said she would take care. The storyteller "gently trembled heart." The walk ended in a kiss.

The next day in the garden, they declared their love to one another. Russia ordered to wait for her at the same place in the evening, but be careful: her mother watches her every move.

At night they met on the shore. On her hand was a plaid. They got into a boat and sailed to the forest on the opposite bank. There is an intimacy between them: “He, with a dazed head, threw her aft. She frantically hugged him ... ".

After a week, the narrator was ugly, shamefully kicked out of the house. The crazy mother of Russia, who was following them, rushed at them when they sat in the living room after dinner and, touching their heads, looked at the pictures in the old Niva rooms and spoke quietly about love.

The student of the storyteller had an old gun, which he loaded only with gunpowder and scared the sparrows. The mad mother shot the storyteller, hit him in the forehead with a gun and screamed with foam on her lips: “If he runs away with you, I will hang myself that day, throw myself from the roof!” Scoundrel, get out of my house! ”She made Russia choose between her and her beloved. The girl chose her mother.

Twenty years have passed since then, and here the narrator is here again. After breakfast, he drinks coffee in a restaurant car. The wife is surprised that he adds so much cognac to the coffee, and suggests that the husband is still sad, recalling "his summer cottage girl with bony feet." Unpleasantly grinning, he confirms: "I'm sad, sad ...".