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. THE END