"You see how we live!" cried Lunev, flaring up again. "Do you see? I can show you another, there! Allow me, my comrade, Pavel Savelitch Gratschev." Pavel came slowly out of the shop, and held out his hand without looking at the girl.
"Medvedeva, Sofia Nikonovna," she said, as she looked at Pavel's despairing face. "And you are Ilya Jakovlevitch?" and she turned again to Lunev.
"Yes," said Ilya, pressed her hand, and went on, still holding it——
"You see, since you're so good—that's to say—as you've helped in one business, you won't despise the other. There's a trouble here too."
She looked attentively and seriously in his handsome excited face and tried quietly to withdraw her hand; but he told her of Vyera and Pavel, speaking warmly, passionately, feeling that a load was falling from his heart. He shook her hand hard and said:
"He makes verses and all sorts of things. But he's quite knocked over by this. And she too, you think, that it's all right because she's—that kind of woman? No, don't think that! No one is all good or all bad!"
"How d'you mean?"
"I mean, even if any one is bad, still there's something good there, and if he's good, there's sure to be something bad. All our souls are two-coloured—all."
"That's well said," she agreed, and nodded seriously. "That's thought like a man! but please let go my hand, you hurt me."
Ilya began to apologise, but she did not attend to him, saying to Pavel in a tone of conviction;