Masha shuddered, raised her head from the pillow and asked:
"What, am I to go home?"
"No. You're home is where, at any rate, you're not tortured. Come Pasha!"
When they were in the shop, Pavel asked gloomily:
"Why is she here? She's like a corpse."
Lunev told him briefly how matters stood. To his astonishment, Gratschev seemed cheered.
"My word, the old devil!" he said, and smiled.
Ilya stood by him, looking round his shop, and said:
"Theft and lying, and robbery, and drunkenness—all kinds of filth and disorder—that is life. You don't want it, but it's all the same, you go down the same stream as the rest and the same water soaks you; live as you have to! You can't get out of it anyhow. Run away to the forest? or a monastery? You told me a little while ago that I should find no peace here."
He indicated the shop with a sweeping gesture, nodded and smiled unpleasantly. "Right, there is no peace. What's the good to me to stand on one spot and do business? Plenty of worry, but no freedom. I can't go out. Before, I went where I liked, in the streets, if I found a nice comfortable place I sat down and enjoyed myself, but now here I squat, day in day out, and that's all."