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A colonel’s widow demands protection from a scandalous hotel guest, then learns one detail that changes her view.
A nervous wife sees a man enter through the kitchen window and sends her sleepy husband into the dark to defend the household’s virtue.
On a remote railway line, an engineer’s late-night argument leads him to confess the human cost of his youthful nihilism.
A homeopathic healer’s grateful patients praise miraculous cures before mentioning their urgent material needs.
An opera star’s quiet night is interrupted by a husband whose grand business plans always require her money.
A lively young wife turns a minor illness into a household drama, while her devoted husband guards a patient who enjoys the part.
When his sister leaves home for a married neighbor, a self-described liberal rides out to settle the scandal and tests his own beliefs.
A ticket inspector vows to reform, but each attempt to perform his duty only makes a sick passenger’s night worse.
A boastful young lover challenges a lawyer to argue him out of marriage—and discovers how quickly conviction can yield to eloquence.
A penniless painter prepares to leave his summer lodging while dreaming of fame and avoiding the young woman who believes in his future.
A landowner confides his fear that ordinary life is incomprehensible, unaware that his closest friend desires his wife.
On Easter morning, a newly married farmer passes a sick soldier on the road and cannot quiet his conscience afterward.
As a child lies gravely ill, his mother and longtime doctor confront a question that has festered between them for years.
A society hostess dazzled by artistic celebrity overlooks the quiet distinction of the doctor she has married.
A sick doctor finds a telegram that confirms his wife’s affair and tries to release them both from a ruined marriage.
One accidental kiss awakens a shy officer’s hope that his ordinary life might contain love after all.
A practiced seducer meets a married woman at a seaside resort and discovers that their affair has become more serious than either expected.
A widow’s annual temperance luncheon drives her respectable guests to increasingly elaborate errands.
A pregnant hostess endures a long name-day party while resentment, jealousy, and fatigue expose the strain in her marriage.
A gentle lawyer accepts a retired Cossack’s hospitality and spends a sleepless night inside the old man’s brutal, self-satisfied world.
A wealthy princess seeks spiritual peace at a monastery, where a former employee challenges her cherished image of her own goodness.
A vanished rake, a locked room, and one foreign match send two investigators racing toward an elaborate murder theory.
A young teacher wins the domestic happiness he imagined, only to find contentment raising questions about the life he has chosen.
Newly married to a wealthy older colonel, a young woman remains fixated on the indifferent friend she once hoped to marry.
