At last he was beginning to understand her allusions, and he wanted to make her keep silence.

But she was in full swing.
"No, hold your tongue, will you?
If you weren't brutes you would be as nice with your wives as you are with us, and if your wives weren't geese they would take as much pains to keep you as we do to get you.

That's the way to behave.

Yes, my duck, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it." "Do not talk of honest women," he said in a hard voice.

"You do not know them." At that Nana rose to her knees.
"I don't know them! Why, they aren't even clean, your honest women aren't! They aren't even clean! I defy you to find me one who would dare show herself as I am doing.