"I know--it's impossible to help me.--How could I be helped? Who is there? We're alone in life, brother; our lot is settled--work, suffer, be silent--and then go out. Devil take you!" He looked searchingly into his friend's face, and added in a decided, sinister tone: "Look! You've crawled into a corner and sit quiet there. But I tell you, there's some one, who watches by night, thinking how to drag you out." "No, no!" said Lunev smiling. "I'll make a fight for it. It's not so easy." "Ah, don't be so sure! You think you'll run this business all your life, eh?" "Why not?" "They'll have you out, or else you yourself will give it up." "But how? You'll have to wait to see that!" said Ilya, smiling. But Gratschev maintained his statement. He looked hard at his friend, and said obstinately: "I tell you, you'll leave it. You are not the kind to sit quiet and warm all your life, and it's certain either you'll take to drink or you'll go bankrupt. Something's bound to happen to you." "Yes, but why?" cried Lunev, in surprise. "For this--You can't stand a quiet life. You're a good fellow, you've a good heart, there are a few like that--they live healthy lives, are never ill, and all of a sudden--bang!" "What d'you mean?" "They fall down dead." Ilya laughed, straightened himself, stretched his strong muscles, and breathed out a deep breath. "That's all rubbish," he said. But at night, as he sat by the samovar, Gratschev's words returned involuntarily, and he considered his business relations with the Avtonomovs. In his delight at their proposal to open a shop, he had agreed to everything that was suggested. Now, suddenly he perceived that, although he had put into the business about four hundred roubles of Poluektov's money, he was rather a manager, engaged by Tatiana Vlassyevna, than her partner. This discovery surprised and annoyed him. "Aha! that's why she kisses me, so as to pick my pocket more easily," he thought. He determined to use the rest of his money to get the business away from his mistress and then separate from her. Even earlier, Tatiana Vlassyevna had seemed to him unnecessary, and of late she had become a burden. He could not reconcile himself to her caresses, and once said to her face: "You're absolutely shameless, Tanyka!" She only laughed. As before, she constantly told him tales of the people of her circle, and once he remarked, doubtfully: "If that's all true, Tatiana, your respectable life isn't good for much." "Why, pray? It's very jolly!" she replied, and shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Jolly? In the day, a fight for crumbs, and at night--beastliness. No! There's something wrong about that." "How simple you are! Now listen," and she began to praise the orderly, respectable middle-class life, and as she praised, strove to hide its hideousness and foulness. "Is that what you call good, then?" asked Ilya. "How odd you are! I don't call it good; but if it weren't it would be very dull."