- Nabokov rereads Reid's novels, and they are sentimental but hold up in moments of language and imagery.
- He re-reads a scene that he and Yuri once reenacted over and over as boys: a criminal runs into a horse trader/baron and the horse trader throws a drink in the criminal's face. After which comes a duel, obviously.
- Nabokov hovers over a passage about the horse trader/baron's cousin, a fair lady named Louise, whose form is quite lovingly described.
- Louise was the first female literary character to rouse his heart, though there were many after here.
- On this lusty subject, Nabokov notes Reid offers this: "The sweetest kiss that I ever had in my life was when a woman—a fair creature, in the hunting field—leant over in her saddle and kissed me as I sate in mine." (10.2.8)
- Though young Vladimir and young Yuri knew boys who had claimed to try to kiss girls while mounted on horses, but no one who had succeeded.
- At the time, this was the height of romance for the two cousins, while elsewhere in literature sex was rampant, but they knew nothing of it.
- Later, Yuri would have sex with the married woman, and Vladimir would have to invent something to participate in this confession, finding his time with Colette on the beach, years prior, the only true romantic experience he'd had.
- Here Nabokov signals that he's going to make a shift by saying: "I am now going to do something quite difficult, a kind of double somersault with a Welsh waggle (old acrobats will know what I mean), and I want complete silence, please." (10.2.9)