Sentence No. 129 · 3 August 2026
His wife was only seventeen; she was beautiful, spoilt, and shy; could she possibly go from village to village begging alms with her face unveiled?
Anton Chekhov, The Duel
Anton Chekhov — The Duel (1891) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Two semicolons split this sentence into three balanced parts: two declarative descriptions of the wife, then a question about her. The question mark at the end signals that the final fragment must be the interrogative clause beginning 'could she possibly'.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. On a cold river-bank, an exile contemplates his young wife's possible fate. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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