Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/234

 “No, no! Let me kiss it!” she cried, seizing his hand and kissing it greedily thrice. “How glad, how glad I am, holy father, to see you at last! You, of course, have forgotten your princess; but I have all along been living my real life in this delightful monastery. How charming everything! Do you know, in this life for God, far from the world's vanities, there is a peculiar charm, holy father, a charm which I feel with my whole soul, but cannot express in words!”

The princess's cheeks grew red and tears came into her eyes. She spoke with passion and without pausing, and the seventy-year-old Archimandrite, serious, ugly, and bashful, kept silence, or interjected abruptly, as a soldier —

“Exactly so, your Excellency. . . I hear. . . I understand. . . .”

“How long will you honour us by staying?” he asked at last.

“Only to-night. In the morning I must drive over to Claudia Nikolaievna — we haven't met for ages. But after to-morrow I shall return, and stay three or four days. I want to rest my soul with you, holy father.”

The princess liked to stay in the monastery of N. Within the last two years she had come to love it so dearly that she drove over nearly every summer month, staying sometimes two days, sometimes three, sometimes all the week. The timid lay brethren, the silence, the