"Checkov, Anton - The Wife And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

again and muttering something. My wife was standing opposite to
him and holding on to the back of a chair. There was a gentle,
sweet, and docile expression on her face, such as one sees on the
faces of people listening to crazy saints or holy men when a
peculiar hidden significance is imagined in their vague words and
mutterings. There was something morbid, something of a nun's
exaltation, in my wife's expression and attitude; and her
low-pitched, half-dark rooms with their old-fashioned furniture,
with her birds asleep in their cages, and with a smell of
geranium, reminded me of the rooms of some abbess or pious old
lady.

I went into the drawing-room. My wife showed neither surprise nor
confusion, and looked at me calmly and serenely, as though she
had known I should come.

"I beg your pardon," I said softly. "I am so glad you have not
gone yet, Ivan Ivanitch. I forgot to ask you, do you know the
Christian name of the president of our Zemstvo?"

"Andrey Stanislavovitch. Yes. . . ."

"_Merci_," I said, took out my notebook, and wrote it down.

There followed a silence during which my wife and Ivan Ivanitch
were probably waiting for me to go; my wife did not believe that
I wanted to know the president's name -- I saw that from her
eyes.

"Well, I must be going, my beauty," muttered Ivan Ivanitch, after
I had walked once or twice across the drawing-room and sat down
by the fireplace.

"No," said Natalya Gavrilovna quickly, touching his hand. "Stay
another quarter of an hour. . . . Please do!"

Evidently she did not wish to be left alone with me without a
witness.

"Oh, well, I'll wait a quarter of an hour, too," I thought.

"Why, it's snowing!" I said, getting up and looking out of
window. "A good fall of snow! Ivan Ivanitch"-- I went on walking
about the room -- "I do regret not being a sportsman. I can
imagine what a pleasure it must be coursing hares or hunting
wolves in snow like this!"

My wife, standing still, watched my movements, looking out of the
corner of her eyes without turning her head. She looked as though
she thought I had a sharp knife or a revolver in my pocket.