Read "The Schoolmaster and Other Stories" by Anton Chekhov online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When Nadya woke up it must have been two o'clock, it was beginning to get light. A watchman was tapping somewhere far away. She was not sleepy, and her bed felt very soft and uncomfortable. Nadya sat up in her bed and fell to thinking as she had done every night in May. Her thoughts were the same as they had been the night before, useless, persistent thoughts, always alike, of how Andrey Andreitch had begun courting her and had made her an offer, how she had accepted him and then little by little had come to appreciate the kindly, intelligent man. But for some reason now when there was hardly a month left before the wedding, she began to feel dread and uneasiness as though something vague and oppressive were before her.
-"Tick-tock, tick-tock . . ." the watchman tapped lazily. "... Tick- tock."