»Listen, Liuba.... It's quite true! ... It's all such nonsense! But, if you wish it, then we can put out the light? Yes, put out the light, please, Liuba.«
»What?« The girl's eyes opened wide in bewilderment.
»I mean,« he continued hurriedly, »that you are a woman and I am ... certainly I was in the wrong.... Don't think it was compassion, Liuba. No, really it wasn't. Really not, Liuba. I ... but turn out the light, Liuba.«
With an agitated smile he put out his hands to her in the clumsy caressing way of a man who has never had to do with women. And this is what he saw: she clenched her fists with a slow effort and raised them to her chin and became, as it were, one immense gasp contained in her swelling bosom, her eyes huge and staring with horror and anguish and inexpressible contempt.
»What is the matter, Liuba?« he asked, shattered. And with a cold horror, without unclasping her fingers, almost inaudibly she exclaimed:
»Oh, you brute! My God, what a brute you are!«
Crimson with the shame of the reproof, and outraged in that he had himself committed outrage, he stamped furiously on the floor and hurled abuse in rough curt words at those wide staring eyes with their unfathomable terror and pain.
»You prostitute, you! You refuse! Silence! Silence!«
But she still quietly shook her head and repeated:
»My God! My God! What a brute you are.«