The narrator, launched by a long-haired fat man of not his first youth, decides to study painting. Throwing his estate in the Tambov province, he spends the winter in Moscow: taking lessons from a "mediocre, but rather famous artist." The narrator lives in rooms on the Arbat and spends evenings "in cheap restaurants with friends from Bohemia." His life is boring and unpleasant.

Once in March, an unfamiliar tall girl comes to him in a gray coat, hat and boots. She introduces herself as a conservative Muse Graf and says she came to get to know each other because she heard that the narrator is an intelligent person.

Muse saw the narrator at the concert; he seemed pretty pretty to her. She is the daughter of a doctor, lives nearby. Barely entering, Muse begins to dispose of - tells the storyteller to take off her outer clothing and boots. The narrator treats the unexpected guest with tea and apples, for which she asks to send a bellboy.

After drinking tea and eating an apple, she invites the storyteller to sit next to her, hugs him and slowly kisses her on the lips. It's getting dark. Muse states that the narrator is her first love.

Soon the narrator quits his studies. They do not part with Muse, go to concerts, exhibitions, lectures.In May, he rents a cottage in an old estate near Moscow, and she goes to him, returning home at one in the morning. In June, Muse goes with him to his village, hosts there, not getting married. They often have a neighbor, Zavistovsky, playing with her on the piano four hands.

Once before Christmas, the narrator travels to the city. Returning, he discovers that Muse has disappeared and decides that she has left for Moscow. In the evening he puts on a short fur coat, takes a gun and goes to Zavistovsky, in his old, impoverished house.

Having come to the neighbor, the narrator reports that Muse disappeared somewhere, and suddenly sees her coming out of the bedroom in felt boots, with a shawl on her shoulders. Having seen that the narrator is with a gun, Muse offers to shoot not at Zavistovsky, but at her.

The narrator looks at her boots, on her knees under a gray skirt, and he wants to shout: "I can’t live without you, for these knees, for a skirt, for boots, I’m ready to give my life!". Muse calmly says that everything is over, asks to do without scenes and calmly lights a cigarette, taking a cigarette from Zavistovsky, with whom she has already switched to “you”.

Stumbling, with a pounding heart in his throat, the narrator goes out.