"When I saw her [Natalia Goncharova] for the first time, her beauty was just beginning to be noticed in society. I fell in love with her, my head was spinning, I asked her to marry me. Your answer, for all its vagueness, almost drove me crazy; that same night I left for the army. You ask me — why? I swear, I don't know how to say it myself; but an involuntary longing drove me from Moscow: I couldn't bear your presence and hers in it."