"Yevpraksia, darling, are you there?" he called.
"Yes, but not for you!" she snapped, so rudely that he immediately retreated to his room.
The next morning there was another conversation.
Yevpraksia intentionally selected morning tea for launching her attacks on Porfiry Vladimirych.
She felt instinctively that a spoiled morning would fill the entire day with anxiety and pain.
"I'd like to see how some people live," she began in a rather enigmatic manner.
Yudushka changed countenance.
"It's beginning," flashed through his mind; but he held his tongue and waited for what would come next.
"It's fine to live with a handsome young friend, upon my word.
You walk about in the rooms and look at each other.
Not a cross word exchanged.
'My darling' and 'my heart'—that's your whole conversation.
Lovely and noble!"
The subject was peculiarly hateful to Porfiry Vladimirych.
Although of necessity he tolerated adultery within strict limits, he nevertheless considered lovemaking a diabolical temptation.
This time, however, he restrained himself, all the more so because he wanted his tea. The tea-pot had been boiling on the samovar for quite some time, but Yevpraksia seemed to have forgotten about filling the glasses.
"Of course, many of us women are foolish," she went on, impudently swinging in her chair and drumming on the table with her fingers. "Some are so silly that they are ready to do anything for a calico dress; others give themselves away for nothing at all.
'Cider,' you said, 'drink as much as you please,' A fine thing to seduce a woman with!"
"Is it from interest alone that——" Yudushka risked a timid remark, watching the tea-pot from which steam had begun to escape.
"Who says from interest alone? Is it I who am a selfish woman?" cried Yevpraksia heatedly, suddenly shifting the conversation. "Do you mean to reproach me for the bread I eat?"
"I don't reproach you. I only said that not from interest alone do people——"
"'I said'!
Talk, but talk sensibly.
The idea! I serve from interest! Kindly permit me to ask you what particular advantage I have derived except cider and gherkins?"
"Well, cider and gherkins are not the only things——" ventured Yudushka, unable to restrain himself.
"What else have I gotten? Let me hear, let me hear!"
"Who sends four sacks of flour to your parents every month?"
"Four sacks. What else?"
"Groats, hemp-seed oil and other things——"
"So you are begrudging my poor parents the wretched groats and oil you send them?
Oh, you!"
"I am not begrudging them. It's you——"
"Now you are accusing me.
I can't eat a crust of bread without being reproached for it, and it's I who am blamed for everything."
Yevpraksia could hold out no longer and burst into tears.
Meanwhile the tea kept on boiling, so that Porfiry Vladimirych became seriously alarmed.
So he suppressed his growing temper, seated himself beside Yevpraksia and patted her on her back.
"Well, well. All right. Pour the tea. What is all this crying for?"
Yevpraksia emitted a few more sobs, pouted and looked into space with her dull eyes.
"You have just been speaking of young fellows," he went on, trying to lend his voice as caressing a ring as possible. "Well—after all, I'm not so old, am I?"
"The idea! Leave me alone."
"Come, come.
I—do you know—when I served in St. Petersburg, our director wanted to give me his daughter in marriage?"
"Must have been an old maid—or a cripple."
"No, she was quite a presentable young lady. And how she sang, how she sang!"
"Maybe she sang well, but you accompanied her badly," she retorted.
"No, I——"
Porfiry Vladimirych was completely put out.
He was ready to act against his conscience and show that he, too, was skilled in the art of love-making.
So he began to rock his body rather clumsily and went so far as to make an attempt to embrace Yevpraksia round her waist. But she drew back firmly from his outstretched arms and cried out angrily: