"A fine creature, a very fine creature, a slut, a good-for-nothing slut, not worth the salt she eats! You hear, madam? you hear, darling? it's to you I'm speaking."
Milena stood pale, awe-stricken, twisting the fringe of her apron round her fingers, looking at him with amazement. It was certainly not the first time in her life that she had seen a drunken man; still, she had never known anyone so fiendish when tipsy.
"A nice kind of woman for a fellow to marry," he went on, "a thing that stands twisting her fingers from morning to night, but who cannot find time to prepare a little supper for a hungry man, in the evening." Then, with a grunt: "What have you been doing the whole of the live-long day?"
Milena did not answer.
"I say, will you speak? by the Virgin, will you speak? or I'll slap that stupid sallow face of yours till I make it red with your blood."
Milena did try to answer, but the words stuck in her throat and would not come out. Radonic thought she was defying him.
"Ah, you'll not answer! You were fooling about the town, or sitting at the window eating pumpkin seeds, waiting for the dogs that pass to admire those meaningless eyes of yours. They are dark, it's true, but I'll make them ten times darker."
Thereupon he made a rush at her, but, swift-footed as she was, she ran on the opposite side of the room. She glanced at the door, but he had shut and bolted it, therefore—being afraid that he might be upon her before she managed to open it—she only kept running round the hearth, waiting till chance afforded her some better way of escape.
He ran after her for some time, but, drunk and asthmatic as he was, he stopped at last, irritated by his non-success. Vexed at seeing a faint smile on her lips, he took up a plate, that had been spared from the day before, and shied it at her. She was too quick for him, for she deftly moved aside, and the plate was smashed against an oaken press.
He gnashed his teeth with rage and showed her his fists; then he bent down, picked up a log, and flourished it wildly about. She at once made for the door. He flung the piece of wood at her with all his might. She once more stooped to avoid it, but, in her eagerness to get out, she was this time rather flurried; moreover, the missile hurled at her was, this time, much bigger than the former one, so that the log just caught her at the back of her head. She uttered a shrill cry, and fell on the ground in a death-like swoon.