“And I thought it was something else. When you said, ‘Be gone!’ I got up and went away. And your words made me feel sad, very sad. There was a time, I remembered, when they caressed me and fondled me unceasingly, without growing tired; for a single kind smile they used to do for me anything I pleased. I recalled all this and began to cry! I felt sorry for my youth, for I am now thirty years old, the last days for a woman! Eh, Foma Ignatyevich!” she exclaimed, lifting her voice louder, and reiterating the rhythm of her harmonious speech, whose accents rose and fell in unison with the melodious murmuring of the water. “Listen to me--preserve your youth! There is nothing in the world better than that. There is nothing more precious than youth. With youth, as with gold, you can accomplish anything you please. Live so that you shall have in old age something to remind you of your youth. Here I recalled myself, and though I cried, yet my heart blazed up at the very recollection of my past life. And again I was young, as though I drank of the water of life! My sweet child I’ll have a good time with you, if I please you, we’ll enjoy ourselves as much as we can. Eh! I’ll burn to ashes, now that I have blazed up!” And pressing the youth close to herself, she greedily began to kiss him on the lips. “Lo-o-ok o-u-u-u-t!” the watch on the barge wailed mournfully, and, cutting short the last syllable, began to strike his mallet against the cast-iron board. The shrill, trembling sounds harshly broke the solemn quiet of the night. A few days later, when the barges had discharged their cargo and the steamer was ready to leave for Perm, Yefim noticed, to his great sorrow, that a cart came up to the shore and that the dark-eyed Pelageya, with a trunk and with some bundles, was in it. “Send a sailor to bring her things,” ordered Foma, nodding his head toward the shore. With a reproachful shake of his head, Yefim carried out the order angrily, and then asked in a lowered voice: “So she, too, is coming with us?” “She is going with me,” Foma announced shortly. “It is understood. Not with all of us. Oh, Lord!” “Why are you sighing?” “Yes. Foma Ignatyich! We are going to a big city. Are there not plenty of women of her kind?” “Well, keep quiet!” said Foma, sternly. “I will keep quiet, but this isn’t right!” “What?” “This very wantonness of ours. Our steamer is perfect, clean--and suddenly there is a woman there! And if it were at least the right sort of a woman! But as it is, she merely bears the name of woman.” Foma frowned insinuatingly and addressed the captain, imperiously emphasizing his words: “Yefim, I want you to bear it in mind, and to tell it to everybody here, that if anyone will utter an obscene word about her, I’ll strike him on the head with a log of wood!”