"The girl is growing tall. I've asked all my acquaintances, cooks, and other women, to see if I could get a place for the child. No, they say there's no place; they say, 'sell her, it will be better for her,' they say, 'she'll get money and clothes, and somewhere to live'—it seems as though they're right. Many a rich man whose body is failing and his mind filthy, will buy a young girl, when women won't look at him any more, and will ruin her—the beast. Perhaps she has a good time with him, but it's disgusting, all the same, really, and it's better without that. Better for her to live hungry and in honour, than——"
She began to cough, as though a word had stuck in her throat, and then finished her sentence with evident effort, but in the same indifferent voice:
"Than in shame and hungry all the same, like me, for instance."
The wind whistled along the floor and rattled fiercely at the door. A fine rain drummed on the galvanised iron roof, and outside in the darkness in front of the window a soft whistling sound was heard. "E—e—e!"
The indifferent tone, and Matiza's plump, inexpressive face, made a barrier to the feelings surging up in Ilya, and took from him the courage to express his desire. Matiza pushed him away, he thought, and he grew angry with her.
"O God! O God!" she sighed softly. "Holy Mother."
Ilya jerked his chair backwards and forwards crossly, and said:
"You call yourself impure, and all the time you're saying: 'God—God.' Do you think He cares, that His name's always on your lips?"
Matiza looked at him, then after a pause, shaking her head:
"I don't understand," she said.