Читать книгу Modern Swedish Masterpieces: Short Stories онлайн

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No, he must move about a bit, stretch his legs a little.—It is not good to sit still too long after a big dinner and smoke three black cigars.

He lighted the fourth and began to saunter back and forward through the room.

He went out into the corridor. Three young men with white flowers in their button-holes sat on the wood-box with cigarettes in holders and talked about women, but they became silent as he went past. He opened the door to the little green cabinet and went in. It was empty. He set the mandarin’s yellow head in motion with a push of his knuckle and passed on to the window.

The window-pane breathed frost and wintry chill. He blew on it till there was a peep-hole between the ice-flowers, put his eye to the glass, and looked out. The sky was dark and glittering with stars. Highest up stood the Dipper with its handle aloft.

It was late, then.

He could not force himself to leave the room, because he felt a bitter and devouring desire for his wife and the kiss of old times, the kiss under the blue-green light from pearl fringe of the single electric light, the kiss which the mandarin had beheld in his nodding half-slumber. If she would only come now, precisely now! No one could kiss as she did, no one. He had kissed other women since she no longer loved him; but he had forgotten them all, he would not recognize them if he met them on the street. If she would only come! Yes, even if she but came to meet the other, even then he would take her forced and treacherous kiss as a boon, even then—