- Next Nabokov wants to talk about something called "the bicycle act" which caused "romantic agitation" that he had to suffer all alone. (10.4.1)
- Without Yuri visiting that year, he fills his days looking up new words in the encyclopedia, butterfly hunting, horseback riding, and eventually riding his bicycle.
- He would ride out from the estate and down the country roads, passing each day a young woman standing in the doorway of a hut (or "isba.")
- The young woman is Polenka, the daughter of the Nabokovs' coachman.
- She smiles at him as he passes, and they see each other occasionally over the course of the next three summers, though they never speak, and Vladimir dreams of her smile.