Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/43

 For a moment Ogneff stood silently. Then he turned awkwardly to the gate and went out of the garden.

“Wait! Let me go with you as far as the wood,” said Vera, running after him.

They followed the road. Trees no longer obscured the view, and they could see the sky, and the country far ahead. Through breaks in the veil of semi-transparent smoke, the world exposed its fairness; the white mist lay unevenly around bushes and hayricks, or wandered in tiny cloudlets, clinging to the surface as if not to cut off the view. The road could be seen all the way to the wood, and in the ditches beside it rose little bushes which trapped and hindered the vagabond mist wisps. Half a verst away rose a dark belt of forest.

“Why has she come? I shall have to see her home,” Ogneff asked himself. But looking at Vera's profile, he smiled kindly, and said —

“I hate going away in weather like this. This evening is quite romantic, what with the moonlight, the silence. . . and all the honours! Do you know what, Vera Gavriilovna? I am now twenty-nine years old, yet have never had a single romance! In all my life so far, not one! So of trysts, paths of sighs, and kisses, I know only by hearsay. It is abnormal. Sitting in my own room in town, I never notice the void. But here in the open air I