h between a necessity and a caprice," Madame
Kandurin answered in a toneless voice.

She had by now recognized the prince, and did not take her eyes off
his figure. It is hard to describe the delight and the suffering
with which her ugly face was radiant! Her eyes were smiling and
shining, her lips were quivering and laughing, while her face craned
closer to the panes. Keeping hold of a flower-pot with both hands,
with bated breath and with one foot slightly lifted, she reminded
me of a dog pointing and waiting with passionate impatience for
"Fetch it!"

I looked at her and at the prince who could not tell a lie once in
his life, and I felt angry and bitter against truth and falsehood,
which play such an elemental part in the personal happiness of men.

The prince started suddenly, took aim and fired. A hawk, flying
over him, fluttered its wings and flew like an arrow far away.

"He aimed too high!" I said. "And so, Nadyezhda Lvovna," I sighed,
moving away from the window, "you will not permit . . ."--Madame
Kandurin was silent.

"I have the honour to take my leave," I said, "and I beg you to
forgive my disturbing you. . ."

Madame Kandurin would have turned facing me, and had already moved
through a quarter of the angle, when she suddenly hid her face
behind the hangings, as though she felt tears in her eyes that she
wanted to conceal.

"Good-bye. . . . Forgive me . . ." she said softly.

I bowed to her back, and strode away across the bright yellow floors,
no longer keeping to the carpet. I was glad to get away from this
little domain of gilded boredom and sadness, and I hastened as
though anxious to shake off a heavy, fantastic dream with its
twilight, its enchanted princess, its lustres. . . .

At the front door a maidservant overtook me and thrust a note into
my hand: "Shooting is permitted on showing this. N. K.," I read.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Chorus Girl and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov

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