Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/246

 hall. And for that I will never forgive her, never! never!”

The doctor stopped, and, grinding his teeth, tried to find something more vindictive and painful. The moment he succeeded, his cold, frowning face shone with pleasure.

“Take your relations with this monastery!” he began eagerly. “You spare no one, and the holier the place the more certain it is to suffer from your charity and angel ways. Why do you come here? What do you want with these monks, let me ask? What is Hecuba to you, and you to Hecuba? Again the same broad farce, the same pose, the same scoffing at human souls, and nothing more ! You do not believe in these monks' God; your heart has a god of its own discovered at spiritualist seances; on the Church's mysteries you look condescendingly, you ignore the services, you sleep till mid-day. . . . Why do you come here? . . . Why to a strange monastery with your own private god, imagining the monastery thinks it a great honour? Ask yourself, if nothing else, what your visits cost these monks! It pleased you to come here to-day, so two days ago a horseman had to be sent ahead to warn the monks. They spent all yesterday preparing your rooms, and waiting. To-day comes your advance-guard, an impudent serving-maid who fusses about the yard, asks questions, orders people about. . . . I cannot tolerate it. The monks