lost, Marie, forgive me for not understanding anything.'
'Eh, leave me alone, it's not your business to understand. And it would be very funny...' she grinned bitterly. 'Talk to me about something. Walk around the room and talk. Don't stand over me and stare at me, that I particularly ask you for the five hundredth time!'
Shatov began to walk around the room, looking at the floor and trying as hard as he could not to glance at her.
'Here—don't be cross, Marie, I beg you—I have some veal here, not far away, and tea... You ate so little before...'
She waved her hand squeamishly and angrily. Shatov bit his tongue in despair.
'Listen, I intend to open a bookbinding shop here, on rational co-operative principles.[189] Since you live here, what do you think: will it succeed or not?'
'Eh, Marie, they don't even read books here, and there aren't any at all. And why would he suddenly go binding them?'
'He who?'
'The local reader, the local inhabitant in general, Marie.'
'Well, speak more clearly, then; otherwise you say
'It's in the spirit of the language, Marie,' Shatov muttered.
'Ah, go on, you and your spirit, it's boring. Why won't the local inhabitant or reader have his books bound?'
'Because to read a book and to bind it are two whole periods of development, and enormous ones. First, he gradually gets accustomed to reading—over centuries, of course—but he tears books and throws them around, not considering them serious things. Now, binding signifies a respect for books, it signifies that he has not only come to love reading, but has recognized it as a serious thing. Russia as a whole has not yet reached this period. Europe has been binding for a long time.'
'Pedantically put, but still it's not such a stupid thing to have said. It reminds me of three years ago. You were sometimes rather witty three years ago.'
She uttered this as squeamishly as all her earlier capricious remarks.
'Marie, Marie,' Shatov addressed her with tender emotion, 'oh, Marie! If you knew how much has passed and gone in these three years! I heard later that you supposedly despised me for changing my convictions. But whom did I abandon? The enemies of living life; outdated little liberals, afraid of their own independence; lackeys of thought, enemies of the person and freedom, decrepit preachers of carrion and rot! What do they have: gray heads, the golden mean, the most abject and philistine giftlessness, envious equality, equality without personal dignity, equality as understood by a lackey or a Frenchman of the year 'ninety-three[190]... And scoundrels, above all, scoundrels, scoundrels everywhere!'
'Yes, there are many scoundrels,' she said haltingly and painfully. She was lying stretched out, motionless and as if afraid to stir, her head thrown back on the pillow, slightly to one side, looking at the ceiling with tired but hot eyes. Her face was pale, her lips dry and parched.
'You understand, Marie, you understand!' Shatov exclaimed. She was about to shake her head, but suddenly the same convulsion came over her. Again she hid her face in the pillow, and again for a whole minute she clung painfully, with all her might, to the hand of Shatov, who rushed to her and was out of his mind with terror.
'Marie, Marie! But this may be very serious, Marie!'
'Keep still... I don't want it, I don't want it,' she kept exclaiming, almost in fury, turning her face up again, 'don't you dare look at me with your compassion! Walk around, say something, talk...'
Shatov, like a lost man, tried to begin muttering something again.
'What do you do here?' she asked, interrupting him with squeamish impatience.
'I go to a merchant's office. You know, Marie, if I really wanted to, I could even get good money here.'
'So much the better for you...'
'Ah, don't think anything, Marie, I just said it...'
'And what else are you doing? What are you preaching? Surely you can't help preaching, with such a character!'
'I preach God, Marie.'
'In whom you don't believe yourself. That's an idea I never could understand.'
'Let's drop it, Marie, save it for later.'
'What was this Marya Timofeevna here?'
'That, too, we can save for later, Marie.'
'Don't you dare make such remarks to me! Is it true that this death can be put down to these people's... villainy?'
'Absolutely true,' Shatov ground out.
Marie suddenly raised her head and cried out painfully:
'Don't you dare say any more to me about it, ever, ever!'
And she fell back on the bed again in a seizure of the same convulsive pain; this was the third time now, but this time her moans grew louder, turned into cries.
'Oh, unbearable man! Oh, insufferable man!' she was thrashing about, no longer sparing herself, pushing away
