"Don't try to frighten me." "I'll make you dance if you begin any of your nonsense!" Vassili was becoming every moment more irritable. "Would you beat me?" She came up to him, and looked curiously into his agitated face. "One would think you were a countess!... Yes, I would beat you." "I'm not your wife, though!" said Malva in a quiet, didactic voice; and without waiting for a reply, she continued--"You used to beat your wife for nothing, and you think now that you can do the same with me. No! I am free. I only belong to myself, and I am not afraid of any one. But you, you are afraid of your son; just now you were trying to get over him! And you, you dare to threaten me?" She threw up her head contemptuously, and remained silent Her disdainful cold words had extinguished Vassili's anger. He had never seen her looking more beautiful, and he was astonished. "Now she's off on her high horse!" he exclaimed admiringly. "I have something else to settle with you. You were boasting to Sereja that I could no more do without you than I could do without bread; that I couldn't live without you! Well, that's just your mistake.... Perhaps, after all, it is not you I care for, not for you that I come here. Suppose, after all, it is because I love this beach?" ... (She stretched out her arms with a gesture of embrace.) "Perhaps I love solitude; here, there are only sky and sea, and no vile human beings. And your being here doesn't count You are the price that I have to pay for coming here.... If Sereja had been here, it would have been Sereja that I should have come to see; if it were your son, I should come also.... It would be best of all if there were no one here.... I am disgusted with you all!... But if I take it into my head, I can any day, beautiful as I know I am, choose another man ... who will be worth more than you." "We'll see about that," hissed Vassili furiously; and he seized her by the throat "So it has come to that, has it?" He shook her, and she did not try to get away, although her flushed face and bloodshot eyes showed that she was choking. But she placed her two hands on the hand that was pressing her throat. "So this was what was in your mind!" (Vassili's voice was hoarse with rage.) "And all the time you said nothing; you kissed me, and you caressed me.... I'll teach you a lesson!" He pushed her down towards the ground, and struck her with a feeling of satisfaction on the neck and shoulders; once, twice, with his heavy muscular fist He felt a pleasant sensation each time that his hand struck the warm, yielding flesh. "Take that!... serpent!..." he said with a triumphant air, pushing her away.