Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 10 in the window. ‘Grushenka,’ he cried, ‘Grushenka, are you
here?’ Though he cried that, he didn’t want to lean out of the
window, he didn’t want to move away from me, for he was
panic-stricken; he was so frightened he didn’t dare to turn
his back on me. ‘Why, here she is,’ said I. I went up to the
window and leaned right out of it. ‘Here she is; she’s in the
bush, laughing at you, don’t you see her?’ He suddenly be-
lieved it; he was all of a shake — he was awfully crazy about
her — and he leaned right out of the window. I snatched
up that iron paper-weight from his table; do you remember,
weighing about three pounds? I swung it and hit him on
the top of the skull with the corner of it. He didn’t even cry
out. He only sank down suddenly, and I hit him again and
a third time. And the third time I knew I’d broken his skull.
He suddenly rolled on his back, face upwards, covered with
blood. I looked round. There was no blood on me, not a spot.
I wiped the paper-weight, put it back, went up to the ikons,
took the money out of the envelope, and flung the envelope
on the floor and the pink ribbon beside it. I went out into
the garden all of a tremble, straight to the apple-tree with a
hollow in it- you know that hollow. I’d marked it long be-
fore and put a rag and a piece of paper ready in it. I wrapped
all the notes in the rag and stuffed it deep down in the hole.
And there it stayed for over a fortnight. I took it out lat-
er, when I came out of the hospital. I went back to my bed,
lay down and thought, ‘If Grigory Vassilyevitch has been
killed outright it may be a bad job for me, but if he is not
killed and recovers, it will be first-rate, for then he’ll bear
witness that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, and so he