“Silence!” cried Nastasia Philipovna. “You are about as fit to understand me as the housemaid here, who bore witness against her lover in court the other day. She would understand me better than you do.”

“Probably an honest girl living by her own toil. Why do you speak of a housemaid so contemptuously?”

“I do not despise toil; I despise you when you speak of toil.”

“If you had cared to be an honest woman, you would have gone out as a laundress.”

Both had risen, and were gazing at one another with pallid faces.

“Aglaya, don’t! This is unfair,” cried the prince, deeply distressed.

Rogojin was not smiling now; he sat and listened with folded arms, and lips tight compressed.