On a rainy autumn day, a dirty tarantass drives up to a long hut, in one half of which there is a post station, and in the other - an inn. In a body of a tarantass sits "the slender old military man in a large cap and in the Nikolaev gray overcoat with a beaver standing collar". A gray mustache with whiskers, a shaved chin and a tiredly questioning look give him a resemblance to Alexander II.

The old man enters the dry, warm and tidy chamber of the inn, smelling sweet of cabbage. His mistress, a dark-haired woman, “still a beautiful woman of no age,” meets him. A visitor asks for a samovar and praises the hostess for cleanliness. In response, the woman calls him by name - Nikolai Alekseevich - and he recognizes in her Nadezhda, his former love, which he had not seen for thirty-five years.

An excited Nikolai Alekseevich asks her how she lived all these years. Hope says that the gentlemen gave her free. She was not married, because she really loved him, Nikolai Alekseevich. He, embarrassed, mutters that the story was ordinary, and everything has long passed - "everything passes over the years."

Others may have, but not hers. She lived with them all her life, knowing that for him it was as if nothing had happened.After he heartlessly abandoned her, she repeatedly wanted to lay hands on herself.

With an unkind smile, Nadezhda recalls how Nikolai Alekseevich read poetry to her "about all kinds of" dark alleys "." Nikolai Alekseevich remembers how beautiful Nadezhda was. He was good too, not without reason she gave him "her beauty, her fever."

Excited and upset, Nikolai Alekseevich asks Nadezhda to leave and adds: “If only God forgave me. And you, apparently, have forgiven. ” But she didn’t forgive and could never forgive - she cannot be forgiven.

Sorting out the excitement and tears, Nikolai Alekseevich orders the horses to be fed. He, too, was never happy in his life. He married out of great love, and his wife left him even more insulting than he Hope. He hoped for his son, but he grew up a scoundrel, an impudent person without honor and conscience.

In parting, Nadezhda kisses Nikolai Alekseevich's hand, and he kisses her hand. On the road, he recalls this with shame and is ashamed of this shame. The coachman says that she looked after them from the window, and adds that Nadezhda is a smart woman, gives money in growth, but is fair.

Now Nikolai Alekseevich understands that the time of the affair with Nadezhda was the best in his life - "Around the rosehip rose scarlet, there were dark linden trees ...". He is trying to imagine that Nadezhda is not the mistress of the inn, but his wife, the mistress of his Petersburg house, the mother of his children, and, closing his eyes, shakes his head.