She began to cough, as though a word had stuck in her throat, and then finished her sentence with evident effort, but in the same indifferent voice: "Than in shame and hungry all the same, like me, for instance." The wind whistled along the floor and rattled fiercely at the door. A fine rain drummed on the galvanised iron roof, and outside in the darkness in front of the window a soft whistling sound was heard. "E--e--e!" The indifferent tone, and Matiza's plump, inexpressive face, made a barrier to the feelings surging up in Ilya, and took from him the courage to express his desire. Matiza pushed him away, he thought, and he grew angry with her. "O God! O God!" she sighed softly. "Holy Mother." Ilya jerked his chair backwards and forwards crossly, and said: "You call yourself impure, and all the time you're saying: 'God--God.' Do you think He cares, that His name's always on your lips?" Matiza looked at him, then after a pause, shaking her head: "I don't understand," she said. "There's nothing to understand," Ilya burst out, getting up from his chair. "You're all alike! first you let your sinfulness drive you--then it's 'O God!' If you want God, then leave your sin!" "What!" cried Matiza, troubled. "What do you mean? Who should call to God if not sinners? Who else?" "I don't know who else," cried Ilya, feeling an unconquerable desire to wound this woman and the whole human race, deeply and cruelly. "I only know it doesn't belong to you to speak of Him, not you, at any rate. You take Him as a cover for your sins--I see. I'm not a child now. I can use my eyes. Every one laments, every one complains, but why are they all so worthless? Why do they lie, and rob one another? Why are they so greedy for a scrap of bread? Ha! ha! First the sin is committed, then it's 'O Lord, have mercy!' I see through you, you liars, you devils! you lie to yourselves, and you lie to your God." Matiza said nothing, but looked at him with her mouth open, and her neck outstretched, and an expression of dull-witted astonishment in her eyes. Ilya strode to the door, drew back the bolt with a jerk and went out slamming the door to behind him. He felt that he had insulted Matiza grossly, and he was glad of it; his heart was lighter and his head clearer. He descended the stairs with a firm step and whistled as he went through his teeth; but his wrath still supplied him with hard, contemptuous words. He felt that all these words glowed in him like flames, and illumined the darkness of his soul, and showed the way which led him apart from mankind. The words fitted not only Matiza, but Terenti, too, and Petrusha, and Strogany, and in short, every one. "That's it," he thought, as he reached the court again. "Just to stand no nonsense from you rabble!" The wind chased round the court howling and whistling. Somewhere some one was knocking and the air was full of short detached sounds, like horrible, cold-blooded laughter.