"Shameless thing! Vile creature!" she scored herself for her weakness. "So that's what you're like!"
Her sense of propriety, outraged by this weakness moved her to such indignation that she heaped upon herself every term of abuse she knew and told herself many biting and humiliating truths. Thus, for instance, she told herself that she had never been virtuous, that she had not fallen before simply because she had had no opportunity, that her inner conflict that day had all been a comedy and a pastime.
"And even if I did put up a fight," she reflected, "what sort of fight was it? Even the women who sell themselves struggle before they bring themselves to do it, and yet they do sell themselves. A fine struggle! Like milk, I've turned in one day! In one dayl"
\Vhat drew her from home, she now knew, was not emotion, not Ilyin's person, but the sensations that awaited her . . . She was a lady, one of many, who was making the most of the summer season!
"And when the fledgling's mother had been slain," someone sang in a husky tenor outside the window.
"If I am to go, it's time," thought Sofya Petrovna. Her heart suddenly began beating with terrible violence.
"Andrey!" she almost shrieked. "Listen! We • • . we are going, aren't we?"
"Yes . . . I've told you aheady: you go alone."
"But listen," she began. "If you don't go with me, you risk losing me. I believe I am . . . in love already."
"With whom?" asked Andrey Ilyich.
"It's all one to you who it is!" cried Sofya Petrovna.
Andrey Ilyich sat up, put his legs over the edge of the bed and looked in wonder at his wife's dark figure.
"Ridiculous!" he yawned.
He did not believe her, and yet he was frightened. After thinking awhile and asking his wife several trivial questions, he delivered himself of his opinions on the family, on infidelity . . . He spoke dully for about ten minutes and lay down again. His sententious pronounce- ments had no effect. There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble!
In spite of the late hour, summer folk were still promenading outside. Sofya Petrovna threw on a light cape, stood about awhile, thought a little . . . She still had enough determination to say to her sleepy husband:
"Are you asleep? I am going for a walk. Do you want to come along?"
That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she went out . . . It was fresh and blowy. She was con- scious neither of the wind nor the darkness, but walked on and on. An irresistible force was driving her forward, and it seemed as though, if she had stopped, it would have pushed her in the back.
"Shameless thing!" she muttered mechanically. "Vile creature!
She was choking, burning with shame, she did not feel her legs under her, but what pushed her forward was stronger than shame, reason, or fear.
At the Mill
set middle-aged man who resembled in face and figure the uncouth, heavy-footed, rough seamen of whom boys dream after reading Jules Verne, sat at the threshold of his hut, sucking lazily at his pipe that had gone out. He wore gray breeches made of coarse army cloth, and large clumsy boots, but no jacket or cap, al- though it was late autumn and the weather was chilly and damp. The mist seeped freely through his unbut- toned shirt, but the miller's huge body that was as tough as a bunion seemed to be insensitive to cold. His red, beefy face was, as usual, apathetic and flabby, as if he had just been sleeping, and his small eyes drowned in fat stared grimly from under his eyebrows, surveying the dam, the two sheds, and the ancient, awkward lows.
Two monks from the neighboring monastery, who had just arrived, Kleopa, a tall, white-haired old man in a cassock bespattered with mud and a patched skullcap, and Diodor, black-haired and swarthy, apparently a Georgian, in an ordinary peasant sheepskin coat, were bustling near the sheds. They were unloading from carts sacks of rye brought to be ground. At some distance, on the brown, muddy grass sat the miller's helper, Yevsey, a beardless young fellow in a tattered coat that was too short for him. He was dead drunk. He crumpled a fish- ing net in his hands, making believe that he was mend-
HE miller, Alexey Birukov, a big, powerful, thick-
ing K.
For a long time the miller looked about and held his peace, then he stared at the monks who were hauling the sacks and said in a thick voice:
"You monks, why have you been fishing in the river? Who said you could?"
The monks made no reply and did not even glance at the miller.
He kept quiet for a while, then lit his pipe and went on:
"You fish yourselves, and you let the townsmen do it, too. I leased the river from you and from the town, too. I pay you money, so the fish is mine and nobody's got the right to catch it. You pray all right, but you don't think it's a sin to steal."
The miller yawned, fell silent again, and then went on grumbling:
"Look at the habit they've got into! They think be- cause they're monks and they're signed up to be saints, there's no law against them. I'll lodge a complaint with the justice of the peace. He won't pay no mind to your cassock and you'll have plenty of time to find out what the clink's like. Or maybe I'll settle your hash for you without troubling His Honor. If I just catch you fishing I'll give it you in the neck so you'll lose your appetite for fish till Judgment Day."
"Don't use such language, Alexey Dorofeich," said Kleopa in a gentle tenor. "Decent, God-fearing people wouldn't talk that way to a dog, and we are monks!"
"Monks!" the miller sneered. "You want fish? Yes? Then buy it from me, don't steal!"
"Good Lord, are we stealing?" Kleopa fro^ed. "Why use such words? True, our lay brothers did catch fish, but they had had Father Superior's permission to do so. Father Superior reasons that you paid out the money not for the whole river, but only so you'd have the right to set out nets near our bank. You didn't get the rights to the whole river. It isn't yours, or ours, it is Gods. . . "
"Father Superior is no better'n you," the miller grum- bled, knocking his pipe against his boot. "He likes cheating, too. I don't make no distinctions. Father Su- perior is the same to me as you or Yevsey there. If I catch him fishing, he'll get it from me too. . . ."
"As for your getting ready to beat up the monks, do as you please. It will be all the better for us in the world to come. You have already beaten up Vissarion and Antipy, so beat up the others."
"Keep still, don't start anything with him!" said Dio- dor, pulling the other by the sleeve.
Kleopa quieted down, stopped talking and started hauling sacks again, while the miller went on scolding. He was speaking lazily, sucking at his pipe after each phrase and spitting. When he had exhausted the subject of fish, he recalled two sacks of his that the monks had allegedly made off with, and he began to abuse them on account of the sacks. Then, noticing that Yevsey was drunk and idling, he left the monks alone and began bawling out his hired men, filling the air with foul curses.
At first the monks restrained themselves and only uttered loud sighs, but soon Kleopa could stand it no longer. He clapped his hands together and said in a tearful voice: "Holy Saints, there is no worse penance for me than to go to the mill! It's hell! Veritable hell!"
"Don't come then!" the miller snapped.
"Queen of Heaven, we'd gladly keep away from here, but where shall we find another mill? Judge for your- self. Except for yours, there isn't a mill in this district! It's a choice between starving and eating unmiled grain!"
The miller wouldn't give in but kept on cursing. It was plain that grumbling and swearing were as much a habit with him as sucking on his pipe.