: The story of a young girl's love for her late father’s friend, their marriage, and the first few years of their married life, including some chilling and quarrels.

Seventeen-year-old girl Masha remains an orphan. She lives in the village with her maid Katya, her younger sister Sonia and another servant. All households are in a state of mourning and longing for their dead mother, the only hope in female society is the arrival of a guardian and an old friend of the deceased father.

Sergey Mikhailovich helps to deal with family affairs and helps defuse the difficult situation in the house. Masha gradually falls in love with her patron; 37-year-old Sergey Mikhailovich falls in love with Masha, although he constantly doubts his choice and speaks about this to Masha:

Wouldn’t it be a misfortune for you to connect your life with an old man who has become obsolete, who only wants to sit, while your God knows what he wanders about, what he wants.

Masha convinces Sergei Mikhailovich of the sincerity of his feelings, and they decide to get married. After the wedding, Masha moves to the estate with her husband, and a happy family life covers them head over heels.

After some time, Masha begins to get bored and burdened by the village life, in which nothing new is happening.Sergei Mikhailovich guesses the mood of his wife and offers to go to St. Petersburg.

In the city, Masha gets acquainted with secular society, she is popular among men and this is very flattering to her. At some point, Masha realizes that her husband is burdened with life in the city and decides to go back to the village, but cousin Sergei Mikhailovich persuades Masha to go to a rout where Prince M., who since the last ball had wanted to meet with Masha, would specially come. There is a dispute between Sergei Mikhailovich and Masha from misunderstanding on two sides: Masha says she is ready to “sacrifice” the rout and go to the village, and Sergei Mikhailovich is outraged by the “victim” of Masha. From this day on, their relationship is changing.

Our relations ‹...› as if stopped, froze and could not become worse or better.

The family has the first son, but the maternal feeling takes possession of Masha for a short time and she again begins to be weighed down by a calm and smooth family life, although they live most of the time in the city.

The family travels abroad to the waters, Masha is already 21. On the waters, Masha is surrounded by cavaliers, in which the Italian Marquis D., who persistently shows his passion for Masha, is particularly active: she is very constrained; for her, everything in male society is not different from each other.

Once on a walk around the castle with a longtime girlfriend L. M. Masha gets into an awkward situation, which ends with the Italian kissing Masha. Feeling shame and aversion to the situation, Masha goes to her husband, who at that time was in another city.Masha persuades Sergei Mikhailovich to immediately go to the village, but at the same time does not tell him anything about what happened to her. Everything in the village is back to square one, but Masha is burdened by an unspoken feeling of resentment and remorse, it seems to her that her husband has become very distant from her, and she wants to return the original feeling of love that was between them.

The novel ends with Masha and Sergey Mikhailovich expressing to each other all their feelings and accumulated grievances: the husband admits that the former feeling cannot be returned and that the former love has grown into another feeling. Masha understands and accepts her husband’s position.

From this day my affair with my husband ended; the old feeling became an expensive, irrevocable memory, and the new feeling of love for children and for the father of my children laid the foundation for another, but completely different, happy life that I had not yet lived at the present moment ...