They meet in the summer, on one of the Volga ships. He is a lieutenant, She is a charming, small, tanned woman returning home from Anapa.

I'm completely drunk, ”she laughed. “Actually, I'm completely crazy.” Three hours ago, I didn’t even suspect your existence.

The lieutenant kisses her hand, and his heart stops blissfully and terribly.

The ship approaches the pier, the lieutenant begs her to get off. A minute later they go to the hotel and rent a large, but stuffy room. As soon as the footman closes the door behind him, both merge so frantically into a kiss that they remember this moment for many years: none of them have ever experienced anything like this.

And in the morning, this little nameless woman, jokingly calling herself “a beautiful stranger” and “Tsar’s Marya Morevna,” leaves. Despite the almost sleepless night, she was fresh, as at seventeen, a little embarrassed, still simple, cheerful, and already reasonable: she asks the lieutenant to stay until the next ship.

There has never been anything even like what happened to me, and there will never be more. It was as if an eclipse came upon me ... Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke ...

And the lieutenant somehow easily agreed with her, drove him to the pier, boarded the ship and kissed everyone on the deck.

He returns easily and carefree to the hotel, but the room seems to be a lieutenant to some other. He is still full of it - and empty. The lieutenant’s heart suddenly contracts with such tenderness that there is no strength to look at the unmade bed - and he covers it with a screen. He thinks this sweet "road adventure" is over. He can’t “come to this city, where her husband, her three-year-old girl, and in general her entire ordinary life”.

This thought strikes him. He feels such pain and the uselessness of his whole future life without it that he is seized with horror and despair. The lieutenant begins to believe that this is really a “sunstroke”, and does not know, “how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this unsolvable torment”.

The lieutenant goes to the bazaar, to the cathedral, then circles for a long time in the abandoned kindergarten, but nowhere does he find comfort and deliverance from this unsolicited feeling.

How wild, how ridiculous is everything everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck by this terrible “sunstroke”, too much love, too much happiness.

Returning to the hotel, the lieutenant orders lunch. Everything is fine, but he knows that without hesitation he would die tomorrow if he could by some miracle return the “beautiful stranger” and prove how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her. He does not know why, but it is more necessary for him than life.

Having realized that it is impossible to get rid of this unexpected love, the lieutenant decisively goes to the post office with the telegram already written, but stops in horror at the post office - he does not know her surname or name! The lieutenant returns to the hotel completely broken, lies down on the bed, closes his eyes, feeling tears rolling down his cheeks, and finally falls asleep.

The lieutenant wakes up in the evening. Yesterday and this morning are remembered to him as a distant past. He gets up, washed, long drinks tea with lemon, pays for the room and goes to the marina.

The ship sets sail at night. The lieutenant sits under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years old.