About Love (for Advanced Levels C1-C2)

“About Love” is a thoughtful and psychologically rich short story by the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov. First published in the late nineteenth century, the story explores one of the most difficult and universal questions in human life: what happens when two people love each other but are unable to live that love openly? It is the final story of the group often known as The Little Trilogy, which also includes The Man in a Case and Gooseberries. These stories share an interest in human limitations, missed opportunities, and the ways people construct barriers around their own lives.

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was one of the most influential Russian writers of the nineteenth century. He was a physician as well as a writer, and his medical background influenced his understanding of human behaviour, emotions, and psychological complexity. Rather than giving his characters simple moral labels, Chekhov often presents them as complicated people whose motives are mixed and sometimes contradictory.

His stories are known for their subtle humour, realistic dialogue, quiet emotional tension, and open-ended conclusions. Instead of telling readers exactly what to think, Chekhov often leaves important questions unanswered. This makes his works particularly valuable for advanced English learners because understanding the story requires more than simply following the plot. Readers must also pay attention to tone, implication, character motivation, and what remains unspoken.

The story is narrated by Alehin, a well-educated man who has left university and taken responsibility for his family’s heavily indebted estate. Although he once expected an intellectual and comfortable life, he gradually becomes absorbed in exhausting agricultural work at Sofino.

His life changes when he meets Anna Alexyevna, the young wife of Luganovitch, a respected court official. Alehin is immediately attracted to Anna’s intelligence, kindness, and beauty. Over time, their relationship becomes increasingly close. They talk for hours, visit the theatre together, and develop a deep emotional connection.

Yet neither of them openly declares their love.

Both understand what is happening, but both are afraid of its consequences. Anna has a husband, children, and a family that depends on her. Alehin also questions whether he can offer her a better life. He worries about morality, responsibility, financial difficulties, and the possibility that their happiness might not last.

Years pass while they remain silent.

Their inability to act becomes the central conflict of the story. The tragedy does not come from a lack of love. Instead, it comes from hesitation, uncertainty, social responsibility, and the endless attempt to find a perfectly rational answer to an emotional problem.

Eventually, circumstances force them to separate. At the railway station, just before Anna leaves, they finally admit what they have felt for years. But by then, the moment has come too late.

The story ends without offering an easy answer. Chekhov leaves readers to consider whether love should always be judged by practical reasoning, whether personal happiness can justify painful choices, and how much of a person’s life can be lost through hesitation.

This version of “About Love” has been carefully rewritten for CEFR C1 English learners. The original story’s major events, characters, relationships, emotional development, central conflict, themes, and ending have been preserved, while the language has been adapted into clear, sophisticated, and natural English.

The adaptation is not intended to reduce Chekhov’s story to a simple summary. Instead, it allows advanced learners to experience the story as a genuine piece of literature while encountering language that is challenging but still accessible at C1 level.

The text includes a variety of grammatical structures, including complex sentences, relative clauses, participle constructions, conditionals, reported speech, and natural dialogue. It also contains useful vocabulary related to emotions, relationships, personality, responsibility, uncertainty, decision-making, regret, and human behaviour.

Why Should You Read This Story?

There are several reasons why “About Love” is valuable for C1 English learners.

First, it can help you move beyond understanding the basic meaning of English sentences. Chekhov’s writing requires readers to understand what characters say, what they mean, and what they deliberately leave unsaid. This is an important skill at an advanced level.

Second, the story provides rich examples of psychological and emotional vocabulary in context. Instead of memorising isolated words, you can learn how sophisticated English is used to describe attraction, hesitation, disappointment, responsibility, inner conflict, and regret.

Third, the story is useful for developing advanced reading comprehension. Important ideas are not always stated directly. You will need to interpret characters’ actions, dialogue, silence, and changes in behaviour.

Finally, the story raises questions that remain relevant today. Have you ever delayed an important decision because you wanted to be completely certain? Can excessive reasoning prevent people from acting? Is protecting other people’s happiness always the right choice? And what happens when an opportunity is postponed for too long?

Chekhov does not give simple answers.

That is precisely why “About Love” is worth reading.

As you read, do not focus only on what happens. Pay attention to why the characters behave as they do, what they are afraid of, what they fail to say, and how their decisions shape their lives.

By the end of the story, you will not only have read a classic work of literature—you will also have practised the kind of careful, analytical reading that is essential for reaching and maintaining a C1 level of English.

This story has been carefully adapted and rewritten by LearnEnglish-new.com for advanced English learners. The original work About Love by Anton Chekhov is in the public domain. This learner-friendly adaptation uses clear, modern English while preserving the main characters, events, psychological depth, and themes of Chekhov’s original story. It is designed to help C1–C2 learners develop their reading comprehension, expand their vocabulary, and deepen their understanding of literary English. Enjoy reading and improve your English skills!

About Love

By Anton Chekhov

Contents

Section One: The Mystery of Love

Section Two: Alehin’s Life at Sofino

Section Three: Meeting Anna Alexyevna

Section Four: A Love That Could Not Be Spoken

Section Five: Years of Silence

Section Six: The Coming Separation

Section Seven: A Confession Too Late

Vocabulary

Comprehension Questions

Grammar Exercises

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Section One

The Mystery of Love

The following day, we had lunch at Alehin’s estate. There were excellent pies, crayfish, and mutton cutlets on the table. While we were eating, the cook, Nikanor, came in to ask what his master and his guests would like for dinner.

Nikanor was a medium-sized man with a swollen face and small eyes. He was clean-shaven, though it looked less as if he had shaved his moustache than as if someone had pulled it out by the roots.

Alehin told us that Pelagea, a beautiful young woman who worked in the house, was in love with Nikanor.

The situation was not a happy one.

Nikanor drank heavily and had a violent temper. Pelagea did not want to marry him, although she was willing to live with him without marriage. Nikanor, however, was deeply religious. His beliefs would not allow him to live with a woman outside marriage, and he insisted that Pelagea become his wife.

When he was drunk, he sometimes insulted her and even beat her.

Whenever this happened, Pelagea would hide upstairs and cry. Alehin and the servants remained in the house to protect her if necessary.

The strange story led us to the subject of love.

Alehin looked thoughtful.

“How does love begin?” he said. “Why does Pelagea not fall in love with someone more like herself, in appearance and character? Why Nikanor, whom we all call ‘The Snout’? And how important is personal happiness in love?”

He paused.

“We think we understand these questions. People have written endlessly about them. But there is really only one thing we can say with certainty: love is a great mystery.”

Burkin agreed.

“I think that is true.”

“Everything else,” Alehin continued, “is merely a question. An explanation that seems convincing in one case may be completely useless in another. Love does not seem to obey a general rule. What explains one person’s feelings tells us almost nothing about someone else’s.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“Perhaps every case should be considered separately. Doctors do this when they treat patients. They do not assume that every illness can be treated in exactly the same way. Love may be the same.”

Outside, the sky was grey. Rain had soaked the trees, and there was no possibility of going anywhere. We had nothing to do except talk.

Alehin seemed to have more to say.

“We educated Russians have a strange habit,” he went on. “We are especially attracted to questions that cannot be answered. We decorate love with poetry, flowers, nightingales, and grand ideas. We ask whether love is honourable or dishonourable, sensible or foolish. We ask where it will lead and what consequences it will have.”

He smiled faintly.

“I remember a woman I knew when I was a student in Moscow. She was charming and close to me. But whenever I embraced her, she was thinking about household expenses: how much money I would give her each month and how much meat cost.”

Burkin laughed softly.

“Perhaps that is how people often behave,” Alehin said. “Instead of simply experiencing what is happening, they immediately begin judging it.”

He looked towards the rain-covered window.

“I don’t know whether such thinking is good or bad. But I know that it can interfere with love. It can make people dissatisfied, uncertain, and afraid.”

It was obvious that Alehin was preparing to tell us something personal.

People who live alone often carry stories inside them that they are eager to tell. In the city, unmarried men sometimes go to restaurants or public baths simply because they want someone to talk to. In the country, they often tell their guests.

The weather had left us prisoners in the house.

So Alehin began.

“I have lived here at Sofino for many years,” he said. “I came here after university. I was educated as a gentleman, and by temperament I was a man who preferred books and ideas to physical labour. But my father had left a considerable debt behind him, much of it caused by the money he had spent on my education.”

He looked down at his hands.

“I could have left. Instead, I decided to stay and pay the debt.”

He had not enjoyed the decision.

The estate produced little, and farming was difficult. There seemed to be no comfortable middle ground. Either one depended heavily on hired labour or worked the land oneself.

“I worked,” Alehin said. “And I worked hard.”

He smiled at the memory.

“At first I thought I could somehow combine farm labour with my old intellectual habits. I kept the best rooms upstairs. I ordered coffee and liquor after meals. I tried to preserve some small signs of my former life.”

But the arrangement did not last.

During the summer, especially at haymaking time, there was hardly a moment to rest. Alehin slept wherever he happened to be: in a barn, in a sledge, or in a forester’s lodge.

Little by little, he moved downstairs.

He began eating with the servants.

The luxurious life he had once imagined disappeared almost completely.

Only the old servants who had worked for his father remained. He could not bring himself to dismiss them.

“And that,” Alehin said, “was how my new life began.”

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Section Two

Alehin’s Life at Sofino

During his first years at Sofino, Alehin was elected an honorary justice of the peace.

This gave him a reason to travel to town and attend court sessions.

He enjoyed those journeys more than he expected.

“When you remain in the country for months,” he explained, “especially during winter, you eventually begin to long for something as simple as a clean black coat.”

He smiled.

“The courtroom seemed luxurious to me. There were lawyers, officials, uniforms, educated men. I could talk to people. After sleeping in a barn and eating in the servants’ kitchen, sitting in a comfortable chair in clean clothes felt like an extraordinary pleasure.”

Town reminded him of the person he had once been.

It also introduced him to people who belonged to the world of education and public life.

Among them was Luganovitch, the vice-president of the circuit court.

Alehin had met him professionally, but they had not been close. That changed after a difficult criminal case involving several men accused of setting fire to property.

The investigation had exhausted everyone.

When the case was over, Luganovitch turned to Alehin.

“Come home with me for dinner.”

The invitation surprised Alehin. He barely knew the man socially.

Nevertheless, he accepted.

That evening he met Luganovitch’s wife, Anna Alexyevna.

She was very young, perhaps twenty-two. She had given birth to her first child only six months earlier.

Alehin could not have explained exactly what attracted him to her.

At first, he simply saw a beautiful, intelligent, gracious woman. Yet there was something else. She seemed strangely familiar to him, as though he had known her long before they met—as though her face belonged to some old memory from his childhood.

Her eyes, in particular, gave him that impression.

They were warm and intelligent.

At dinner, Alehin spoke passionately about the criminal case they had just dealt with. He believed that the accused men had been treated unjustly.

Anna listened carefully.

At one point she looked at her husband.

“Dmitry, how can this be?”

Luganovitch, however, was a simple-hearted man who trusted the legal system.

“You and I did not set fire to the place,” he said calmly. “We are not in prison, are we?”

His answer was not cruel. It was simply the way he understood the world.

Alehin noticed how naturally husband and wife moved around each other.

They made coffee together without speaking much. They understood one another through the smallest gestures.

Their marriage seemed peaceful.

After dinner, they played a piano duet.

Alehin watched them.

There was something deeply comfortable in their relationship, something that made him feel both welcome and strangely separate.

Later that evening he returned to his hotel.

The next day he went back to Sofino.

Summer occupied him completely. There was work everywhere, and he had little time to think about town.

Yet the memory of Anna remained.

He did not consciously think about her.

It was more subtle than that.

It was as though her presence had left a faint shadow across his mind.

Months later, in late autumn, Alehin attended a theatrical performance in town.

During the interval, he entered the governor’s box.

Then he saw Anna.

The feeling returned immediately.

She was sitting beside the governor’s wife.

Again he was struck by her beauty, but it was not simply physical beauty. Her eyes had the same gentle, almost affectionate quality that had affected him at their first meeting.

They spoke.

“You’ve become thinner,” Anna said. “Have you been ill?”

“Yes. I’ve had trouble with my shoulder. When the weather is wet, I cannot sleep.”

She looked at him carefully.

“You seem discouraged. When you came to dinner in spring, you were younger somehow. You were confident and full of energy. You talked so much. You were interesting.”

She hesitated.

“I must confess that I was rather carried away by you.”

Alehin listened without knowing what to say.

“For some reason,” she continued, “you came into my thoughts during the summer. And when I was getting ready for the theatre tonight, I thought I might see you.”

She laughed, almost embarrassed by her own honesty.

“But you look older today.”

The following day, Alehin had lunch with the Luganovitches.

After lunch they drove to their summer house to prepare it for the winter.

Alehin went with them.

Later, they returned to town and drank tea together while the fire burned in the room.

Anna repeatedly went to check whether her baby was sleeping.

Alehin watched the scene.

There was something deeply peaceful about the family.

He felt drawn to it.

And yet, at the same time, he felt himself becoming attached to the woman at its centre.

After that, whenever he went to town, he visited the Luganovitches.

Before long, his visits became so natural that he no longer needed to announce himself.

He was treated almost as a member of the family.

Sometimes, when he arrived, he would hear Anna’s voice from another room.

“Who is there?”

“Pavel Konstantinovitch,” the maid or nurse would answer.

Anna would come out to meet him.

And almost every time, she would ask:

“Why have you been away so long? Has something happened?”

Her voice, her manner, her clothes, her hair, the way she moved her hand towards him—every small detail seemed new to Alehin.

More importantly, each detail seemed important.

They could talk for hours.

Sometimes they sat in silence, each thinking their own thoughts.

Sometimes Anna played the piano.

If nobody else was at home, Alehin stayed. He talked with the nurse, played with the child, or read in the study.

When Anna returned, he would meet her in the hall and carry her parcels.

He did this with a strange seriousness, almost like a boy performing an important duty for someone he adored.

He did not yet fully understand what was happening to him. But his life was changing.

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Section Three

Meeting Anna Alexyevna

The Luganovitches became deeply fond of Alehin. They worried about him.

They thought that a man with his education and knowledge of languages should be doing something more intellectual than exhausting himself on a farm.

They imagined that his hard work concealed unhappiness.

They were often right.

When Alehin was troubled by creditors or unable to pay some financial obligation, husband and wife would quietly discuss his situation.

Then Luganovitch would approach him.

“If you are in need of money, Pavel Konstantinovitch, please don’t hesitate to borrow from us.”

He would say this with such seriousness that Alehin could hardly refuse without hurting him.

Sometimes they gave him gifts instead: a cigar case, a pair of studs, a lamp.

Alehin sent them game, butter, and flowers from the estate.

They had plenty of money.

Still, there was one thing Alehin would never accept from them.

He would borrow from almost anyone when he needed money.

But not from Luganovitch.

He could not bring himself to do it.

By then, he was already in love with Anna.

He knew it.

Perhaps she knew it too.

But neither of them said anything.

Alehin spent long hours thinking about her.

At home, in the fields, in the barn, she was in his thoughts.

He tried to understand why she had married Luganovitch.

Her husband was more than forty. He was kind, honest, and respectable, but Alehin found him uninteresting.

This judgment may have been unfair.

Alehin knew that.

Nevertheless, he could not stop asking himself why Anna had met Luganovitch first.

Why had she not met him?

Why had their lives followed such different paths?

Why had something that seemed so simple become impossible?

The questions tormented him.

Whenever he visited town, Anna seemed to expect him.

Sometimes she admitted that she had felt certain he would come.

They could sit together for hours.

They could talk.

They could remain silent.

Yet the most important thing remained unspoken.

They were afraid of discovering the truth even though both seemed to know it already.

Alehin loved her deeply.

But he could not see what their love could possibly lead to.

If he confessed his feelings, what would happen?

Would Anna leave her husband?

Would she take her children?

Would she leave her mother, who loved Luganovitch like a son?

And where would Alehin take her?

His own life was not impressive.

He had no great career.

He was not a celebrated scientist, artist, or writer.

He was simply a man working endlessly on a difficult estate.

Suppose Anna left everything for him.

What then?

Would their happiness last?

What would happen if Alehin became ill?

What if he died?

What if they simply stopped loving each other?

These questions seemed reasonable.

They also became a prison.

Alehin was not only afraid of causing suffering.

He was afraid of discovering that the love he imagined might not survive ordinary life.

Anna, he believed, was thinking in much the same way.

She had a husband.

She had children.

She had a mother who loved her husband.

If she followed her feelings, she would have to lie—or tell the truth.

Neither choice seemed bearable.

She also worried about Alehin.

Would she make his difficult life even harder?

Would she become a burden?

She sometimes told her husband that Alehin ought to marry a capable, intelligent young woman who could manage a household and help him.

Then she would add, almost casually, that there was hardly such a woman in the whole town.

Alehin understood what she was saying.

And he understood what she was not saying.

Their love existed in the space between words.

That space became larger with every passing year.

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Section Four

A Love That Could Not Be Spoken

Time passed. Anna had another child. Alehin became a familiar figure in the Luganovitch household.

When he arrived, the servants smiled.

The children ran towards him.

“Uncle Pavel Konstantinovitch!”

They climbed onto him and welcomed him as though he belonged there.

They believed he was happy.

Everyone did.

To them, Alehin seemed almost noble.

His presence gave their family life an unusual warmth.

Yet beneath that appearance, he carried a private sorrow.

Anna and Alehin often went to the theatre together.

They walked side by side through the town.

They sat together in the stalls.

Sometimes their shoulders touched.

Alehin would take the opera-glass from her hands without a word.

In such moments, her nearness seemed almost unbearable.

He could feel how deeply he needed her.

He sometimes thought that she belonged with him, that neither of them could truly live without the other.

And yet, when the performance ended, they separated.

They said goodbye politely.

They behaved as though they were strangers.

People in town probably talked about them.

But the rumours were wrong.

There was no open affair.

There was no scandal.

There was only a love that neither person had allowed to become a reality.

As the years went by, Anna began to change.

She often visited her mother or her sister.

She became depressed.

She began to understand that something in her life was missing.

Sometimes she did not want to see her husband.

She was receiving treatment for nervous exhaustion.

Alehin and Anna remained silent about their feelings.

Their silence became increasingly painful.

Strangely, Anna sometimes became irritated with him when other people were present.

Whatever he said, she disagreed.

If he argued with someone, she supported the other person.

If he dropped something, she might say coldly:

“I congratulate you.”

If he forgot to bring the opera-glass to the theatre, she would say:

“I knew you would forget it.”

These remarks seemed trivial.

But they revealed something deeper.

The feelings they could not express privately emerged as irritation in public.

Neither of them knew how to escape the situation.

Alehin continued to visit.

Anna continued to wait for him.

Their lives remained close enough to sustain hope, but never close enough to allow fulfilment.

Perhaps that was the cruelest part.

If they had been separated completely, they might have forgotten each other.

If they had been free, they might have acted.

Instead, they remained near one another for years.

They lived beside the possibility of another life without entering it.

Alehin later understood that they had spent too much time trying to determine whether their love was reasonable.

Was it right?

Was it wrong?

Was it moral?

Was it selfish?

Would it make them happy?

Would it destroy other people’s happiness?

Every question produced another question.

Every answer created another doubt.

And while they were thinking, life continued.

The children grew.

Years passed.

People changed.

Opportunities disappeared.

Still, neither of them acted.

Alehin now understood something he had failed to understand when he was younger.

Human beings often believe that they must first understand everything before they can act.

But life rarely gives them that certainty.

Sometimes the desire for certainty becomes another form of fear.

He had wanted to know in advance whether their love would succeed. He had wanted guarantees.

There were none. And so he had waited. Anna had waited too.

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Section Five

Years of Silence

The situation became harder as the years passed. Anna was no longer the young woman Alehin had first met. She was still beautiful, still intelligent, but sadness had become part of her.

Alehin could see that her marriage had not given her the happiness she had once expected.

Yet he could not blame Luganovitch.

The man had been kind to him.

He had trusted him.

He had welcomed him into his home.

He had treated him almost like a member of the family.

The children loved him.

How could Alehin destroy such a life simply because he and Anna loved each other?

That was the question that stopped him.

But there was another question.

What right did he have to sacrifice his own life simply because he was afraid of hurting someone else?

He had no answer.

And neither did Anna.

They were trapped between responsibility and desire.

Their society had its expectations.

Marriage mattered.

Family mattered.

Reputation mattered.

But even beyond society, there were private responsibilities that could not simply be dismissed.

Anna had children.

Alehin had his own difficult life.

Leaving everything behind might not produce the happiness they imagined.

It might merely exchange one form of suffering for another.

So they continued as before.

They talked.

They met.

They helped each other.

They watched one another closely.

But they did not speak openly.

Sometimes Alehin felt that their silence had become almost a third person between them—a presence that entered every room whenever they were together.

They both knew what it meant.

They both avoided naming it.

Then circumstances finally forced a separation.

Luganovitch was appointed president of a court in one of the western provinces.

The family would have to leave.

Their furniture was sold.

The horses were sold.

The summer house was prepared for sale.

When Alehin accompanied them there for the last time, he looked back at the garden and the green roof.

Everyone was sad.

But Alehin understood that he was not merely saying goodbye to a house.

He was saying goodbye to Anna.

The family would soon leave.

Anna was going to Crimea first, where doctors had recommended that she spend some time.

Later, Luganovitch and the children would travel to the western province.

The departure became real.

For years, Alehin had lived with the knowledge that Anna was there.

Even if he did not see her, he could imagine visiting her.

He could imagine sitting beside her.

He could imagine hearing her voice.

Now there would be no more visits.

No more theatre evenings.

No more conversations that lasted for hours.

No more possibility of postponing the decision.

Soon there would simply be distance. Perhaps that was why the truth became clearer.

A decision that had been avoided for years was suddenly being made by circumstances.

There was no longer time to think. And perhaps, for the first time, thinking itself seemed pointless.

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Section Six

The Coming Separation

A large group of people came to the station to see Anna off. She said goodbye to her husband.

She embraced her children. Everyone was busy with luggage and farewells. The train was about to leave.

Alehin had been trying to behave normally.

He wanted to remain calm.

He wanted to continue being the man everyone believed him to be.

Then he noticed a basket that Anna had almost forgotten.

He carried it into her compartment and placed it on the luggage rack.

There was only a minute before the third bell.

He should have left.

Instead, he remained.

Anna looked at him.

Their eyes met.

For years they had protected themselves from that moment.

Now the protection disappeared.

Something inside both of them gave way.

Alehin took her in his arms.

Anna pressed her face against his chest.

She began to cry.

He kissed her face.

Then her shoulders.

Then her hands, wet with tears.

They were both overwhelmed by the knowledge that they had loved each other for years.

And that they were about to lose each other.

“I love you,” Alehin finally said.

The words were simple.

Yet they contained years of silence.

Years of hesitation.

Years of questions.

Years of fear.

He realized, with painful clarity, how much of their suffering had come from their own attempts to reason about love before allowing themselves to experience it.

They had asked whether their love was moral.

They had asked whether it would bring happiness.

They had asked what would happen afterwards.

They had tried to calculate the consequences before admitting the truth.

Now those calculations seemed small.

They had protected themselves from imagined disasters while allowing something real to disappear.

Alehin understood something else.

Love could not always be judged by ordinary ideas of happiness and unhappiness, right and wrong, advantage and disadvantage.

If a person reduced love to a list of practical questions, perhaps the most important part of it would disappear.

He could not change the past.

Neither could Anna.

The years had already passed.

The children already existed.

The marriage already existed.

The choices they had avoided making had become choices in themselves.

Anna cried.

Alehin held her.

For a brief moment, the life they had refused to live seemed almost real.

But the train was waiting.

The world outside the compartment continued to move.

People were saying goodbye.

The railway bell sounded.

They had no future together.

Only the truth of what they had felt.

Alehin kissed her once more.

Then he pressed her hand.

They parted.

The train began to move.

Alehin left the compartment and entered the next one.

It was empty.

He sat down.

Only then did he allow himself to cry.

He cried throughout the journey until the next station.

Then he left the train and began the journey back to Sofino.

Anna was gone.

The life they might have shared was gone with her.

All that remained was the memory of what they had finally admitted too late.

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Section Seven

A Confession Too Late

Alehin stopped speaking. For a moment nobody said anything. During the time he had been telling his story, the rain had stopped.

The clouds were breaking. Sunlight appeared over the garden.

From the balcony there was a beautiful view of the trees and the mill-pond, which now reflected the light like a mirror.

Burkin and Ivan Ivanovitch went outside.

They admired the landscape.

Yet they were thinking about Alehin.

He was a kind and intelligent man.

They could not help feeling that his life had taken the wrong shape.

Instead of spending his days endlessly working on the huge estate, he might have devoted himself to science, literature, or some other intellectual pursuit.

They also thought about Anna.

Burkin knew her.

He remembered her as a beautiful woman.

He tried to imagine the expression on her face when she had said goodbye to Alehin in the railway carriage.

The story had no simple moral.

It did not tell them that one should always follow one’s feelings.

It did not say that marriage was meaningless or that responsibility should be ignored.

Nor did it suggest that love automatically leads to happiness.

The story offered something more difficult.

It showed how human beings can become trapped by their own reasoning.

Alehin and Anna had not lacked feeling.

They had lacked the courage to accept uncertainty.

They wanted to know what their love would become before they allowed themselves to act upon it.

They wanted to protect everyone from suffering.

They wanted to make the correct decision.

But life did not offer them a correct decision.

It offered only time.

And time eventually ran out.

Perhaps that was the mystery Alehin had been trying to explain from the beginning.

People often believe that love should have a logical explanation. They ask why one person loves another. They ask whether the relationship is sensible.

They ask whether it will last. They ask whether the person deserves happiness.

They ask what society will think.

They ask what will happen tomorrow. But love does not answer such questions. It exists before the explanations.

Sometimes it survives them. Sometimes it is destroyed by them. Alehin had spent years trying to understand his feelings.

Anna had done the same. They had protected their families. They had protected their reputations.

They had protected one another. And yet, in protecting everything around them, they had lost the possibility of living the one life they secretly desired.

Their tragedy was not that they had never loved. It was that they had loved deeply and remained silent. When they finally spoke, there was almost nothing left to be done.

The sun was now shining over the garden. The rain had disappeared. The mill-pond reflected the bright sky.

Everything outside seemed peaceful. But peace was not the same as happiness. And the beauty of the afternoon could not return the years that had passed. Alehin had gone back to Sofino.

Anna had gone away on the train. Their lives would continue separately.

The memory of their love, however, would remain. Perhaps that was all that was left to them. Not a shared future.

Not a new beginning.

Only the knowledge that, for many years, they had loved each other—and had understood it fully only when they were finally forced to part.

The End

Read the original story: americanliterature.com

Vocabulary

Comprehension Questions

Grammar Exercises

Answers

1-B, 2-C, 3-B, 4-C, 5-A, 6-C, 7-B, 8-A, 9-A, 10-C, 11-B, 12-A, 13-A, 14-C, 15-C, 16-A, 17-B, 18-A, 19-A, 20-B

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