“Marie, I’ll do anything you like.… I’ll walk about and talk.…”
“Surely you must see that it has begun!”
“What’s begun, Marie?”
“How can I tell! Do I know anything about it?… I curse myself! Oh, curse it all from the beginning!”
“Marie, if you’d tell me what’s beginning … or else I … if you don’t, what am I to make of it?”
“You are a useless, theoretical babbler. Oh, curse everything on earth!”
“Marie, Marie!” He seriously thought that she was beginning to go mad.
“Surely you must see that I am in the agonies of childbirth,” she said, sitting up and gazing at him with a terrible, hysterical vindictiveness that distorted her whole face. “I curse him before he is born, this child!”
“Marie,” cried Shatov, realising at last what it meant. “Marie … but why didn’t you tell me before.” He pulled himself together at once and seized his cap with an air of vigorous determination.
“How could I tell when I came in here? Should I have come to you if I’d known? I was told it would be another ten days! Where are you going?… Where are you going? You mustn’t dare!”