“Why do you keep on with your aimais and aimais? Enough!” she cried, leaping up again. “And if you don’t go to sleep at once I’ll … You need rest; go to sleep, go to sleep at once, shut your eyes. Ach, mercy on us, perhaps he wants some lunch! What do you eat? What does he eat? Ach, mercy on us! Where is that woman? Where is she?”
There was a general bustle again. But Stepan Trofimovitch faltered in a weak voice that he really would like to go to sleep une heure, and then un bouillon, un thé.… enfin il est si heureux. He lay back and really did seem to go to sleep (he probably pretended to). Varvara Petrovna waited a little, and stole out on tiptoe from behind the partition.
She settled herself in the landlady’s room, turned out the landlady and her husband, and told Dasha to bring her that woman. There followed an examination in earnest.
“Tell me all about it, my good girl. Sit down beside me; that’s right. Well?”
“I met Stepan Trofimovitch …”
“Stay, hold your tongue! I warn you that if you tell lies or conceal anything, I’ll ferret it out. Well?”
“Stepan Trofimovitch and I … as soon as I came to Hatovo …” Sofya Matveyevna began almost breathlessly.
“Stay, hold your tongue, wait a bit! Why do you gabble like that? To begin with, what sort of creature are you?”
Sofya Matveyevna told her after a fashion, giving a very brief account of herself, however, beginning with Sevastopol. Varvara Petrovna listened in silence, sitting up erect in her chair, looking sternly straight into the speaker’s eyes.
“Why are you so frightened? Why do you look at the ground? I like people who look me straight in the face and hold their own with me. Go on.”