"Stop! where are you going to?"
"Leave me alone!" said Jakoff, moving a step forward. But Sereja had seized his other leg.
"Sit down beside me."
"Why!... What new nonsense are you up to?"
"It's not nonsense I Sit down."
Jakoff set his teeth, and obeyed.
"What do you want?"
"Wait Hold your tongue ... whilst I think; and then I'll talk to you."
He looked the lad up and down, and Jakoff submitted.
Malva and Vassili walked on for a few moments in silence. Malva's eyes had a strange sparkle in them. And Vassili was gloomy and preoccupied. Their feet sank into the sand, and they walked with difficulty.
"Vassia!"
"Well?"
He looked at her, and turned away immediately.
"It was I who made you quarrel on purpose with Jakoff.... You might have both lived here without quarrelling," she said, in a voice that was even and unmoved.
There was not a shade of regret in her words.
"Why did you do that?" Vassili asked, after a moment's silence.
"I don't know ... for no reason."
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
"That's a nice thing you have done," he said irritably.
She was silent.
"You will make me lose my boy, lose him altogether; you sorceress! Have you no fear of God? Are you not ashamed?... What are you going to do?"
"What ought I to do?" she said.
A mixture of agony and of despair sounded in her voice.
"What ought you to do?" cried Vassili, flashing out suddenly into rage.
He felt a passionate desire to strike her, to throw her down and bury her in the sand, to kick her in the face and on the bosom....
He clinched his fists and cast a look behind him.
Over there near the barrels he saw Sereja and Jakoff, and their faces were turned in his direction.
"Get along with you; or I shall do for you!..."
He stopped and breathed curses into her face. His eyes were bloodshot, his beard trembled, and his hands were stretched involuntarily towards Malva's hair, which appeared above her shawl.
Her green eyes were fixed on him.
"You deserve to be killed!... But wait a bit. Some one will break your head one of these days!"
She smiled, but remained silent. Then sighing deeply, she said—
"That's enough now. Good-bye!"
And turning quickly on her heels, she walked back.
Vassili yelled after her and ground his teeth. Malva, as she walked tried to put her feet into the footmarks which Vassili had made, and when she succeeded she carefully destroyed all traces of his footprints. Finally she reached the barrels, when Sereja received her with the question—"Well, you walked a bit of the way with him?"
She made an affirmative sign with her head, and sat down by him.
And Jakoff watching her, smiled softly, moving his lips as if he were saying things to her that no one else heard.
"And when you left him did you cry?" asked Sereja.
"When are you going over there to the cape?" she asked him, indicating the sea with a movement of her head.
"This evening."
"I shall go with you."
"Bravo!... I like that."
"And I also, I shall go!" said Jakoff.
"Who invites you?" said Sereja, screwing up his eyes.
The harsh tinkle of a cracked bell was heard; it was the call to work. The sounds rang out through the air, one following rapidly the other, as if they feared to be late, or to be drowned in the sound of the waves.
"She will invite me," said Jakoff.
He glanced at Malva defiantly.
"I?... What should I want with you?" she replied, with surprise in her voice.
"Let's speak plainly, Jakoff," said Sereja. "If you bother her I'll beat you into a jelly. And if you touch her with a finger, I'll crush you like a fly. I'll give you one over the head that will just finish you altogether. I'm very straightforward in my ways." His face, his whole figure and his knotted arms threatened Jakoff's throat, and seemed to prove eloquently, that in reality, to kill a man was to Sereja a very simple matter.
Jakoff stepped back and said in a stifled voice—
"Wait a minute! It's she who..."
"Hold your tongue, and there's an end of it! What does all this mean? It's not you, you dog, who are going to eat the lamb. If you get the bones thrown to you, you may say thank you. We've had enough of this."
Jakoff looked at Malva. Her green eyes were laughing in a way that wounded him, and she rubbed up against Sereja in such a coaxing way that Jakoff felt the perspiration break out all over him.
They walked off side by side, and then both of them burst out laughing. Jakoff crushed his right foot hard into the sand, and remained standing thus, his body stretched forward, his face red, his heart beating.
Far away over the dead ripples of the sand, the outline of a small dark human figure was moving; on his right shone the sun and the mighty sea, and on his left, as far as the horizon, there was sand, nothing but sand, smooth, vast and silent. Jakoff watched the solitary man and blinked his eyes, which were full of tears—tears of humiliation and of painful uncertainty—and he rubbed his chest roughly with both his hands.
At the fishery, work was going on briskly. Jakoff heard the deep, melodious voice of Malva, saying angrily—
"Who has taken my knife?"
The waves rippled, the sun shone, the sea laughed.