Chekhov's sense of an ending: Lady with a Little Dog

So I was a wrong in my recollection of Chekhov's Lady with a Little Dog - in yesterday's post noted that my memory was that he'd get what he deserved - that she (Anna, the eponymous lady) would spur him (Gurov) - but that's not the case: Second part of the story, lady returns to her home (not in Moscow, as I'd thought, but in the provincial town that Chekhov in his delightfully Russian manner identifies as S - Woody Allen had a lot of fun with these Russianisms in one of his essays) - while Gurov goes home to Moscow - but he years for her, makes a surprise visit to her city, stands for sometime outside the gate to her home, hoping she'll notice him (she doesn't - he watches a maid walk the dog) - and then he steps up to her at the opening night of an opera (The Geishas - interesting choice). They resume their affair, and she begins regular visits to see him in Moscow - it's obvious that her husband, described (by her) as "lackey" know of this - does he care? We learn nothing about his point of view. Gurov's wife obviously does not care what he does, she's contemptuous of him. The story ends with Gurov and Anna realizing or believing that they can find happiness with one another, not sure how to maintain their relationship, and realizing that they have just begun on a journey that will be extremely difficult for both. This ending is one of those extraordinary Chekhov conclusions that open the story up rather than tie down the loose ends - the type of ending that has influenced the short story for more than a century, with the greatest contemporary practitionist being William Trevor. The ending invites us to think beyond the margins of the story and imagine where they characters will go, what their fates will be - it makes the characters more real and complete by withholding information, and it makes us more active and engaged readers by understatement and indirection. In this case, though I don't feel Gurov is as despicable as I did in the first half of the story - he does, in fact, grow and change, as many great characters (and people) do - I do sense that what makes their affair so significant to the two is the illicit, secretive, risky aspect - if they were to each divorce and marry one another, I suspect that a follow-up story ten years down the road would show a horrible marriage, with Gurov back to his duplicity - though note that the end of Lady with a Little Dog shows Gurov worried about losing his looks - so maybe he'd be trying desperately to hold on to Anna, and she'd be the one to lose interest. And by the way: what ever happened to the little dog?