Anna and Nikolai meet at a public meeting, after not seeing each other for more than 20 years. Nikolai suggests that Anna go to his hotel to chat more quietly. They drink wine to celebrate their reunion. She tells him about her failed remarriage to an alcoholic invalid, then her current lonely life. He remarried a Ukrainian woman, but seems unsatisfied. We understand that they loved each other once but that she preferred her friend Ivan who died at the front after a year of living together.
