Anton Chekhov's The Duel

Ivan Andreitch Laevsky is an educated Russian aristocrat who has run off with a married woman, Nadyezyhda Fyodorovna (Nadya), to the Black sea. He got a job in the civil service, but is careless about his work, mostly drinking and playing cards. By now he has fallen out of love and is bored with Nadya, who is having affairs with other men, and he wants to leave her. He receives a letter telling him that Nadya's husband has died (and therefore she is free to marry him). But he hides the letter in a book and doesn't tell Nadya. That, he says, would be like inviting her to marry him.