Of the two sisters, he loved the young: Failed Chekhov marraiges

And after two Anton Chekhov stories about bad marriages - how about two stories (in the Pevear-Volokhonsky selection of Stories) about failed marriages, that is, of marriages that failed to happen because of the complete eccentricity, or narcisssism, of one of the characters: First, The House with a Mezzanine, a Chekhov rarity in that it's written in first person, in which an artist describes part of a summer he spent at a friend's estate, next door to the eponymous house, in which lived two sisters, a beautiful elder sister who's politically passionate and scornful of the artist as a worthless aesthete, and the younger sister just entering womanhood. Toward end of summer, the artist embraces the younger sister and kisses her, and it's assumed that they are destined for each other - but the next morning she's gone, the older sister has stolen her off to Crimea or some remote place, and the young sister leaves a note, and the artist, forlorn, never sees her again. Similar story: Man in a Case, this one narrated by one hunter two another during a night's layover in a remote hut, he describes a very eccentric colleague who teaches Greek and is always telling others what they should and shouldn't do - a stickler for rules and conventions. Surprisingly, he falls in love with a visitor, and they seem to be on the verge of getting engaged - but the woman's brother, another teacher in the school, can't stand the Man in a Case (that is, sheltered from and buffered against all the troubles of the world) and essentially tosses him out on his ear - and the woman laughs at that. End of relation - and the Man in the Case becomes ill from the shock of the toss-out (and the rejection?) and dies. Sad stories, in a way - and both about people who should have been left alone to find the love that would make them happy, but were tragically derailed by meddling siblings who think they know what's best.