A short story by Anton Chekhov , read by Micheline Patton
While Anton Chekhov is probably best known as a dramatist, he was also a short-story writer of undoubted genius. His stories indeed have a sensitiveness and insight into human psychology that is scarcely surpassed in a country whose literature is renowned for these qualities. Chekhov has been called the play-wright of farewells, and in ' The Kiss ' he writes of that saddest of all farewells, the good-bye of a man to something that he has never really had.
The story is simple enough, and the heart of the reader or listener must go out to the timid little officer, Ryabovitch, who, with his ' spectacles, sloping shoulders, and * whiskers like a lynx's ' reaps his few-seconds of unexpected heaven, and finds that they lead him to a disillusionment that he can bravely defy.