Tatiana was busy at the stove and singing softly. Ilya looked at her, and again felt a painful discomfort; but almost immediately the sensation vanished under the influence of new impressions and cares. During these days he had no time to give to brooding; the arrangement of the shop and the purchase of goods occupied him entirely, and from day to day amidst his work he grew accustomed to this woman, almost without knowing, like a drunkard to the taste of brandy. She pleased him more and more as a mistress, although her caresses often caused him shame, even anxiety; her caresses and her talk together slowly destroyed his respect for her as a woman. Every morning after she had seen her husband off to work, or in the evenings when he was on duty, she called Ilya to her or came into his room, and told him all sorts of stories "of real life;" and all her stories were curiously vicious, as though they related to a country inhabited only by liars and scoundrels of both sexes, whose greatest pleasure lay in adultery. "Is that all true?" asked Ilya gloomily. He didn't want to believe, but felt helpless and unable to contradict. He listened, and life seemed to him like a swill-tub, and men moving in it like worms. "Ugh!" he said wearily, "is there nothing clean or true anywhere?" "What d'you call true? What d'you mean?" asked Tatiana in surprise. "Why, something honourable!" cried Lunev angrily. "Why, it's honourable people I'm speaking of--how funny you are! I don't make it all up." "That's not what I mean. Is there anywhere anything honourable--pure, or not?" She did not understand and laughed at him. Sometimes her conversation took a different tone; looking at him with greenish eyes, darting an uncanny fire, she asked him: "Tell me, what was your first experience of women?" Ilya was ashamed of the memory, it was hateful to him. He turned away from the glance of his mistress, and said in a low reproachful voice: "What horrid things you ask! I think you ought to be ashamed--men don't even speak like that with one another." But she laughed happily, and went on talking till Lunev often felt defiled with her words as with pitch. But if she read in his face any hostile feeling, or perceived in his eyes any weariness, or distress, or sorrow, she knew how to kindle his desire afresh and banish by her caresses all feelings hostile to her influence. One day when Ilya returned from the shop, where already the joiners were putting in the shelves, he saw to his astonishment, Matiza in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, her big hands folded in her lap, and conversing with the mistress of the house, who was standing by the hearth. "Here," said Tatiana, and nodded at Matiza, "this lady has been waiting for you, for ever so long." "Good evening!" said Matiza, and got up clumsily. "Why," cried Ilya, "are you still living?" "Even pigs don't eat dirty bits of wood," answered Matiza in her deep voice.