Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/216

 do my best. But the storm, the storm, Lord God, Thy will! May God keep us from losing the road! Does your side hurt? Matrena, why don't you answer? I ask, does your side hurt?

“Why is it the snow doesn't melt on her face?” he asked himself, feeling a cold wind on his back and frozen legs. “My snow thaws, but hers. . . . It's strange!”

He could not understand why the snow on his wife's face did not thaw, why her face was drawn-out, severe, and serious, and had turned the colour of dirty wax.

“You are a fool!” muttered the turner. “I spoke to you from my conscience, before God! . . . and you haven't the manners to answer. . . . Fool! If you're not more careful, I won't take you to Pavl Ivanuitch!”

The turner dropped the reins, and thought. He could not make up his mind to look at his wife. He was nervous; and soon his wife's unmannerly silence frightened him. At last, to end his uncertainty, without looking at his wife, he felt her icy hand. The uplifted hand fell, as a whip.

“She's dead, I suppose. An adventure!”

And the turner wept. He wept less from grief than vexation. He reflected how quickly everything happens in this world ; how he had hardly entered into his woe ere the woe was past. He hardly seemed to have had time to live with his wife, speak to her, feel for her, and now she was dead. True, they had lived