Anton Chekhov

“ Volodya thought with vexation as he got into bed. "But never mind; I'll wait till to-morrow . . . to-morrow in the arbour. It doesn't matter. . . ."
He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and thinking. All thought of the examination was hateful to him. He had already made up his mind that they would expel him, and that there was nothing terrible about his being expelled. ”

“ The top button of her blouse was undone, so that the boy saw her throat and bosom.
"Why don't you say something?" said Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down. "It's not polite to be silent when a lady talks to you. What a clumsy seal you are though, Volodya! You always sit, saying nothing, thinking like some philosopher. There's not a spark of life or fire in you! ”

“ At four o'clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless night, the prospect of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience--all roused in him now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He looked at maman's sharp profile, at her little nose, and at the raincoat which was a present from Nyuta, and muttered:
"Why do you powder? It's not becoming at your age! You make yourself up, don't pay your debts at cards, smoke other people's tobacco . ”

“ Morphine," Nyuta explained in a whisper. "There must be a label in Latin. Wake Volodya; he will find it."
Maman opened the door and Volodya caught sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same loose wrapper in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair hung loose and disordered on her shoulders, her face looked sleepy and dark in the half-light. . . .
"Why, Volodya is not asleep," she said. "Volodya, look in the cupboard for the morphine, there's a dear! What a nuisance Lili is! She has always something the matter." ”

“ It seemed to him that he was in love with Anna Fyodorovna, the Shumihins' cousin, who was staying with them. She was a vivacious, loud-voiced, laughter-loving, healthy, and vigorous lady of thirty, with rosy cheeks, plump shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual smile on her thin lips. She was neither young nor beautiful-- Volodya knew that perfectly well ”

“ The music teacher was comforting maman in the next room. "He is young! Young people of his age never restrain themselves. One must resign oneself to that."
"No, Yevgenya Andreyevna; he's too spoilt," said maman in a singsong voice. "He has no one in authority over him, and I am weak and can do nothing. Oh, I am unhappy!"
Volodya put the muzzle of the revolver to his mouth, felt something like a trigger or spring, and pressed it with his finger. ”

“ Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced at Nyuta's laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting behind her back. He held her round the waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to her head, showing the dimples in her elbows, she set her hair straight under the kerchief and said in a calm voice:
"You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that under feminine influence. ”

“ You are really horrid! . . . At your age you ought to be living, skipping, and jumping, chattering, flirting, falling in love."
Volodya looked at the sheet that was held by a plump white hand, and thought. . . .
"He's mute," said Nyuta, with wonder; "it is strange, really. . . . Listen! ”

“ He tried to persuade her, said rude things, but she--a frivolous, pampered woman, who had run through two fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her time, and always gravitated towards acquaintances of high rank--did not understand him, and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he hated.
In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling which was absolutely new to him. . . . ”

“ And the heavier the weight on his heart, the more strongly he felt that somewhere in the world, among some people, there was a pure, honourable, warm, refined life, full of love, affection, gaiety, and serenity. ”

“ This desire was not like the pure, poetic love of which he read in novels and about which he dreamed every night when he went to bed; it was strange, incomprehensible; he was ashamed of it, and afraid of it as of something very wrong and impure, something which it was disagreeable to confess even to himself.
"It's not love," he said to himself. "One can't fall in love with women of thirty who are married. ”

“ He was ashamed that he had been treated like a small boy, ashamed of his shyness, and, most of all, that he had had the audacity to put his arms round the waist of a respectable married woman, though, as it seemed to him, he had neither through age nor by external quality, nor by social position any right to do so. ”