"Hold your tongue, and there's an end of it! What does all this mean? It's not you, you dog, who are going to eat the lamb. If you get the bones thrown to you, you may say thank you. We've had enough of this."
Jakoff looked at Malva. Her green eyes were laughing in a way that wounded him, and she rubbed up against Sereja in such a coaxing way that Jakoff felt the perspiration break out all over him.
They walked off side by side, and then both of them burst out laughing. Jakoff crushed his right foot hard into the sand, and remained standing thus, his body stretched forward, his face red, his heart beating.
Far away over the dead ripples of the sand, the outline of a small dark human figure was moving; on his right shone the sun and the mighty sea, and on his left, as far as the horizon, there was sand, nothing but sand, smooth, vast and silent. Jakoff watched the solitary man and blinked his eyes, which were full of tears—tears of humiliation and of painful uncertainty—and he rubbed his chest roughly with both his hands.
At the fishery, work was going on briskly. Jakoff heard the deep, melodious voice of Malva, saying angrily—
"Who has taken my knife?"
The waves rippled, the sun shone, the sea laughed.