The Party by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
page 9 of 264 (03%)
page 9 of 264 (03%)
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"Oh! A bee, a bee!" she shrieked. "It will sting!" "Nonsense; it won't sting," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "What a coward you are!" "No, no, no," cried Lubotchka; and looking round at the bees, she walked rapidly back. Pyotr Dmitritch walked away after her, looking at her with a softened and melancholy face. He was probably thinking, as he looked at her, of his farm, of solitude, and--who knows?--perhaps he was even thinking how snug and cosy life would be at the farm if his wife had been this girl--young, pure, fresh, not corrupted by higher education, not with child. . . . When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Olga Mihalovna came out of the shanty and turned towards the house. She wanted to cry. She was by now acutely jealous. She could understand that her husband was worried, dissatisfied with himself and ashamed, and when people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest to them, and are unreserved with strangers; she could understand, also, that she had nothing to fear from Lubotchka or from those women who were now drinking coffee indoors. But everything in general was terrible, incomprehensible, and it already seemed to Olga Mihalovna that Pyotr Dmitritch only half belonged to her. "He has no right to do it!" she muttered, trying to formulate her jealousy and her vexation with her husband. "He has no right at all. I will tell him so plainly!" |
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