Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/168

 “What time is it ?” she asked.

“About three.”

“Well, what?”

“Just that. I came to say that he's dying.”

He sobbed, sat down on her bed, and wiped away his tears with his sleeve. At first Olga Ivanovna understood nothhig; than she turned cold, and began to cross herself.

“He is dying,” he repeated in a thin voice; and again he sobbed. “He is dying — because he sacrificed himself. What a loss to science!” He spoke bitterly. “This man, compared with the best of us, was a great man, an exceptional man! What gifts! What hopes he awakened in us all!” Korosteleff wrung his hands. “Lord, my God, you will not find such a scholar if you search till judgment day! Oska Duimoff, Oska Duimoff, what have you done? My God!”

In despair he covered his face with his hands and shook his head.

“And what moral fortitude!” he continued, each second increasing in anger. “Good, pure, loving soul — not a man, but a crystal! How he served his science, how he's died for it. Worked — day and night — like an ox, sparing himself never; and he, the young scholar, the coming professor, was forced to seek a practice and spend his nights translating to pay for these. . . these dirty rags!”