"I'm used to being hurt," said Lunev now, and smiled at her in challenge, but with the coldness of disillusion in his heart.
"Ah, you're playing with me!" was his thought. "First you'll stroke me, and then strike? Well, you shan't!"
"I didn't mean to hurt you!" Her words sounded to Ilya hard, even condescending.
"It would be hard for you to hurt me, really," he began loudly and boldly. "I think I know now the kind of lady you are. You're a bird that doesn't fly very high."
At these words she drew herself up, astonished, with eyes wide open. But Ilya noticed nothing now, the hot desire to pay her back for what she had done to him burned in him like a flame, and he used hard, harsh words, slowly and carefully.
"Your superiority—this pride—they don't cost much. Any one who has the chance of education can get them. If it wasn't for your education, you'd be a tailoress or a housemaid. As poor as you are, you couldn't be anything else!"
"What's that you say?" she exclaimed.
Ilya looked at her and was glad to see how her nostrils quivered and her cheeks reddened.
"I say what I think; and I do think it. All your cheap airs of superiority aren't worth a button."
"I've no airs of superiority!" the girl cried in a ringing voice. Her brother hurried to her, took her hand and said loudly, looking angrily at his master, "Come away, Sonyka."