He listened, and life seemed to him like a swill-tub, and men moving in it like worms.
"Ugh!" he said wearily, "is there nothing clean or true anywhere?"
"What d'you call true? What d'you mean?" asked Tatiana in surprise.
"Why, something honourable!" cried Lunev angrily.
"Why, it's honourable people I'm speaking of—how funny you are! I don't make it all up."
"That's not what I mean. Is there anywhere anything honourable—pure, or not?"
She did not understand and laughed at him. Sometimes her conversation took a different tone; looking at him with greenish eyes, darting an uncanny fire, she asked him:
"Tell me, what was your first experience of women?"
Ilya was ashamed of the memory, it was hateful to him. He turned away from the glance of his mistress, and said in a low reproachful voice:
"What horrid things you ask! I think you ought to be ashamed—men don't even speak like that with one another."