"Why don't you go?" asked Malva.
"Where?" he asked.
"You wanted to go to town."
"I shan't go now."
"Well, go to your father's."
"And you?"
"What?"
"Shall you go, too?"
"No."
"Then I shan't either."
"Are you going to stay round me all day?"
"I don't want your company so much as that," replied Iakov, offended.
He rose and moved away. But he was mistaken in saying that he did not
need her, for when away from her he felt lonely. A strange feeling had
come to him after their conversation, a secret desire to protest against
the father. Only yesterday this feeling had not existed, nor even
to-day, before he saw Malva. Now it seemed to him that his father
embarrassed him and stood in his way, although he was far away over the
sea yonder, on a narrow tongue of sand almost invisible to the eye.
Then it seemed to him, too, that Malva was afraid of the father; if she
were not afraid she would talk differently. Now she was missing in his
life while only that morning he had not thought of her.
And so he wandered for several hours along the beach, stopping here and
there to chat with fishermen he knew. At noon he took a siesta under
the shade of an upturned boat.
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