Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/236

 a walk. The sun had set. The monastery garden breathed to the princess moist odours of newly watered mignonette ; the even chanting of the monks borne from the chapel was pleasant, yet sad. The vesper service had begun. The dark windows with little hospitable lamps, the shadows, the old monk with the mug seated in the porch near the image — all expressed such deep, unrebelling restfulness that the princess, somehow, felt that she wanted to cry.

And outside the gates, on the path between wall and birches, evening had already fallen. The air darkened swiftly, swiftly. The princess walked down the path, sat on a bench, and thought.

She thought how good it would be to settle for life in this monastery, where all was silent and resigned as the summer night; to forget for ever her ingrate, dissolute prince, her great estates, the creditors who troubled her every day, her misfortunes, her maid Dasha, on whose face she had only that mprning seen an impudent grin. How good it would be to sit out life on this bench and peer between birch-trunks into the valley where the evening mist wandered in patches about; and far, far overhead, in a black, veil-like cloud, rooks flew home to their nests; to watch the two lay brethren, one on a piebald horse, the other on foot, who drove in the horses for the night, both enjoying freedom and playing like little children — their young voices rang loudly through the motionless