"Yes, I have,"--she replied in an irresolute tone:--"but, Naúm Ivánovitch, what ...." "Give it here, if thou hast brought it,"--he interrupted her, stretching out his hand. She drew from beneath her kerchief on her neck some sort of packet. Naúm instantly grasped it and thrust it into his breast. "Naúm Ivánitch,"--enunciated Avdótya, slowly, and without taking her eyes from him.... "Okh, Naúm Ivánitch, I am ruining my soul for thee...." At that moment the maid-servant had come upon them. So, then, Akím was sitting on the wall-bench and stroking his beard with his dissatisfaction. Avdótya kept entering the house and leaving it. He merely followed her with his eyes. At last she entered yet again, and taking a warm wadded jacket from the little room, she was already crossing the threshold; but he could endure it no longer, and began to talk, as though to himself: "I wonder,"--he began,--"what makes these women-folks always so fidgety? That they should sit still in one spot is something that can't be demanded of them. That 's no affair of theirs. But what they do love is to be running off somewhere or other, morning or evening.--Yes." Avdótya heard her husband's speech out to the end without changing her attitude; only, at the word "evening," she moved her head a mere trifle, and seemed to become thoughtful. "Well, Semyónitch,"--she said at last, with irritation,--"'t is well known that when thou beginnest to talk, why...." She waved her hand and departed, slamming the door behind her. Avdótya did not, in fact, hold Akím's eloquence in high esteem, and it sometimes happened, when he undertook of an evening to argue with the travellers, or began to tell stories, she would yawn quietly or walk out of the room. Akím stared at the closed door.... "When thou beginnest to talk," he repeated in an undertone .... "that 's exactly it, that I have talked very little with thee.... And who art thou? My equal, and, moreover ...." And he rose, meditated, and dealt himself a blow on the nape of his neck with his clenched fist.... A few days passed after this day in a decidedly queer manner. Akím kept on staring at his wife, as though he were preparing to say something to her; and she, on her side, darted suspicious glances at him; moreover, both of them maintained a constrained silence; this silence, however, was generally broken by some snappish remark from Akím about some neglect in the housekeeping, or on the subject of women in general; Avdótya, for the most part, did not answer him with a single word. But, despite all Akím's good-natured weakness, matters would infallibly have come to a decisive explanation between him and Avdótya had it not been for the fact that, at last, an incident occurred, after which all explanations would have been superfluous.