The Tales of Chekhov, vol 3 | Page 8

shall be
happy, never! Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to
Moscow. But now let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must
part!"
She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking

round at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was
unhappy. Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound
had died away, he found his coat and left the theatre.
IV
And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in
two or three months she left S----, telling her husband that she was
going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint--and her husband
believed her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the
Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov.
Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the
messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him
walked his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the
way. Snow was falling in big wet flakes.
"It's three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing," said
Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth;
there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the
atmosphere."
"And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?"
He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was
going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never
would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who
cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly
like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running
its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental,
conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest
and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not
deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden
from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he
hid himself to conceal the truth--such, for instance, as his work in the
bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with his
wife at anniversary festivities--all that was open. And he judged of
others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing
that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of
secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy,
and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man was so
nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky
Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly
knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey
dress, exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting
him since the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did
not smile, and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their
kiss was slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.
"Well, how are you getting on there?" he asked. "What news?"
"Wait; I'll tell you directly. . . . I can't talk."
She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and
pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he sat
down in an arm-chair.
Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank
his tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She
was crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their
life was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding
themselves from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?
"Come, do stop!" he said.
It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over,
that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and
more attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to
her that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not
have believed it!
He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something
affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the
looking-glass.
His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to
him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the