He became silent—then she began to speak—softly and mournfully as though speaking of the dead:
“And I thought it was something else. When you said, ‘Be gone!’ I got up and went away. And your words made me feel sad, very sad. There was a time, I remembered, when they caressed me and fondled me unceasingly, without growing tired; for a single kind smile they used to do for me anything I pleased. I recalled all this and began to cry! I felt sorry for my youth, for I am now thirty years old, the last days for a woman! Eh, Foma Ignatyevich!” she exclaimed, lifting her voice louder, and reiterating the rhythm of her harmonious speech, whose accents rose and fell in unison with the melodious murmuring of the water.
“Listen to me—preserve your youth! There is nothing in the world better than that. There is nothing more precious than youth. With youth, as with gold, you can accomplish anything you please. Live so that you shall have in old age something to remind you of your youth. Here I recalled myself, and though I cried, yet my heart blazed up at the very recollection of my past life. And again I was young, as though I drank of the water of life! My sweet child I’ll have a good time with you, if I please you, we’ll enjoy ourselves as much as we can. Eh! I’ll burn to ashes, now that I have blazed up!”
And pressing the youth close to herself, she greedily began to kiss him on the lips.
“Lo-o-ok o-u-u-u-t!” the watch on the barge wailed mournfully, and, cutting short the last syllable, began to strike his mallet against the cast-iron board.
The shrill, trembling sounds harshly broke the solemn quiet of the night.
A few days later, when the barges had discharged their cargo and the steamer was ready to leave for Perm, Yefim noticed, to his great sorrow, that a cart came up to the shore and that the dark-eyed Pelageya, with a trunk and with some bundles, was in it.
“Send a sailor to bring her things,” ordered Foma, nodding his head toward the shore.
With a reproachful shake of his head, Yefim carried out the order angrily, and then asked in a lowered voice:
“So she, too, is coming with us?”