Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/53

 speech, and was silent. He felt that his expression was guilty, stupid, and dull, and that his face was strained and drawn out. And Vera, it seemed, could read the truth in his looks, for she paled, looked at him with terror, and averted her eyes.

“You will forgive me,” stammered Ogneff, feeling the silence past bearing. “I respect you so very, very much that. . . that I am sorry. . .”

Vera suddenly turned away, and walked rapidly towards the house. Ogneff followed her.

“No, there is no need!” she said, waving her hand. “Do not come! I will go alone. . . .”

“But still. . . I must see you home.”

All that Ogneff had said, even his last words, seemed to him flat and hateful. The feeling increased with each step. He raged at himself and, clenching his fists, cursed his coldness and awkwardness with women. In a last vain effort to stir his own feelings he looked at Vera's pretty figure, at her hair, at the imprints of her little feet on the dusty road. He remembered her words and her tears. But all this filled him only with pain, and left his feelings dead.

“Yes. . . . A man cannot force himself to love!” he reasoned, and at the same time thought, “When shall I ever love except by force? I am nearly thirty. Better than Verotchka among women I have never met. . . and never shall meet. Oh, accursed old age! Old age at thirty!”