Any rapprochement, which at first enlivens life so nicely and seems to be a nice and easy adventure, inevitably grows into an extremely difficult task for decent people, and the situation eventually becomes painful.
This quote epitomizes Gurov's cynicism about love and intimacy at the start of the story. He views intimacy as an endeavor that eventually turns bitter, no matter how light-hearted a pursuit it is at the start. As Gurov falls in love over the course of the story, however, he loses this cynicism. Ironically, this quote turns out to be true, but not in the way he expects: his light-hearted intimacy with Anna immensely complicates and disrupts his life.
The stories told of the immorality in such places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew that such stories were for the most part made up by persons who would themselves have been glad to sin if they had been able; but when the lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered these tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance with an unknown woman, whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of him.
This quote illustrates the influence of public opinion. Gurov considers an affair with Anna, a newcomer to Yalta, largely because he has heard rumors of extramarital affairs surfacing in Yalta. This quote also characterizes the impending affair between Anna and Gurov as sinful, establishing the tension between personal satisfaction and morality that plagues both characters throughout the story.
And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings—the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky—Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.
This quote illustrates the transcendent power of love that Gurov experiences through his affair with Anna. The narrator gives this description of Gurov's thoughts after Gurov and Anna make love for the first time. Observing the sea next to her in the early morning, Gurov is plainly overcome by a moment of awe. Aspects of life that he previously viewed through a cynical lens have now become sublime, thanks to the love blossoming between them.
