"I mean the way you are talking to me. She, she taught you. No one else!" he foamed in a rage. "Give her silk dresses! The impudence! Do you know, you shameless creature, who in your position wears silk dresses?"
"Tell me and I will know."
"The most—the most dissolute ones. They are the only ones who wear silk dresses."
But Yevpraksia was not impressed. On the contrary, she answered him back with saucy arguments.
"I don't know why you call them dissolute. Everybody knows it's the masters that insist upon it. If a master seduces one of us, well, she lives with him. You and I are not so saintly either, we are doing the same as the Mazulina master and his queen."
"Oh, you! Fie, fie, for shame!"
Yudushka stared at his rebellious companion in utter consternation. A flow of empty words came tripping to his tongue, but for the first time in his life he felt a vague suspicion that there are occasions when even talk is useless.
"Well, my friend, I see there's no use talking to you to-day," he said, rising from the table.
"Neither to-day, nor to-morrow—never! No more of your tyranny! I've listened to you enough; now it's time for you to listen to me."
Porfiry Vladimirych made a movement as if to throw himself at her with clenched fists, but she protruded her chest with such determination that he lost heart. He turned his face to the ikon, lifted up his hands prayerfully, mumbled a prayer, and trudged slowly away into his room.