cidedly. “Now . . . I feel better,” sighed Annie after a moment. “Here it is so beautiful!” Most people would find it difficult to understand what there was attractive about a man’s shabby coat, smelling of tobacco; but Annie thrust her head into it and for nothing in the world would she have turned to look up at the stars, so pleasant was it in this dark and smoky resting place. Her hair tickled Prokop under the nose and had about it an exquisite fragrance. Prokop smoothed her drooping shoulders, smoothed her young neck and breast, and encountered nothing but palpitating devotion; then, forgetting everything, he roughly and brutally seized her head and began to kiss her on her moist lips. And, lo! Annie defended herself wildly, became quite paralyzed with fear and gasped out “No, no, no!” She again buried her face in his coat and he could almost hear the frightened beating of her heart. Prokop suddenly realized that she had probably been kissed for the first time.
Then he became ashamed of himself, grew extraordinarily serious and did not venture to do more than smooth her hair. This one may do . . . God, she’s still just a child and quite naïve! And now not a word that might besmirch this innocent young creature; not a thought which would coarsely interpret the confused emotions of this evening! In truth he did not know what he was saying; it had a crude melody and no syntax; it touched in turn upon the stars, love, God, the beauty of the night and some opera or other the name of which Prokop was quite incapable of recalling, but the notes of which were sounding intoxicatingly in his head.
