The Permanent Husband Chapter 17

In which our erstwhile friend Velchaninoff, newly restored in vigour and fortune, encounters an old companion amid the transient theatre of a railway station, where polite society mingles uneasily with the imperfections of human nature. Their meeting, marked by laughter and sudden seriousness, unfolds as a quiet drama of past connections and unspoken troubles, captured with gentle irony and a touch of melancholy.