"I am strong and healthy; so are you," continued Grigori; "and yet we have no children. What is the reason?... I think and think about it till I get quite melancholy, and take to drinking in sheer desperation!"
"What you are saying is not true!" said Matrona in a firm loud voice. "You are not speaking the truth! Never dare to repeat to me what you have just said!... If you take to drink, it is only your own dissipated habits that prevent your keeping away from it My not having children has nothing to do with it! That idea is false, Grigori!"
Grigori was stunned by her words. He rose and leaned against the back of his chair, watching his wife, and scarcely recognizing her. Never before had he seen her in such a rage; looking at him with so much pitiless anger in her eyes; never before had she spoke with such fierce strength.
"Go on!... Go on!.." said Grigori defiantly, whilst he clutched the back of the chair. "I should like to hear what else you have got to say!"
"You shall soon hear!... I should never have said what I have just said, if you had not reproached me so unfairly! You tell me I do not bear you children!... Very well!... Never will I bear you a child.... I have no wish to bear one to you, after the way you have treated me!"
Her voice broke with sobs, but she almost screamed the last words.
"Stop that noise!" said her husband in a severe voice.
"Would you like me to remind you why I have no children?... Just remember, Grischka, how you have always ill-treated me, and constantly kicked me about the body! Just reckon up the blows and knocks you have given me, the times you have tortured me! How often have you made the blood flow? My clothes were often soaked with blood. And it's your cruelty, my dear husband, that has prevented my having children! ... And now you reproach me with it?... Are you not ashamed to look into my eyes, you murderer—you?... Yes, you are a murderer, for you have killed your own children! And now you want to lay the blame upon me!... upon me, who bore everything, who forgave you everything! But these words I can never forget or forgive; to my dying hour I shall remember them! ... Did you imagine then that I did not, like other women, long for children? Did you think I did not wish to have any?... Many and many a night, when I lay sleepless, I have prayed the good God to save the child in my womb from you ... you murderer! When I see some other woman's child, I could cry with envy and bitterness, because such happiness is denied me.... Ah! Holy Virgin! How often have I wished that Senka were my child! How I would have cared for him!... And then, notwithstanding all this, for you to reproach me with not bearing you a child!..."
She had grown breathless, and the words poured incoherently from her lips. Her face was congested, and showed red patches under the skin; she trembled and clutched her throat, which was choked with sobs.
Grigori sat white and troubled, still holding on tightly to his chair; watching with wide-open eyes this woman, his wife, but who seemed now a stranger to him. He was afraid of her ... he was afraid she might seize him and throttle him. She seemed to threaten him with her flashing angry eyes. At this moment she was immeasurably his superior; he felt it and feared her accordingly. He could not jump up and strike her, as he would have done formerly, for he could not help being overawed by the moral and mental force, which seemed to make of her a new being.