Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com to gentlemen in secret to sell her beauty! Brother, what
could be worse than that insult?’
What worried Alyosha more than anything was that,
incredible as it seemed, his brother appeared pleased at Kat-
erina Ivanovna’s humiliation.
‘Bah!’ Dmitri frowned fiercely, and struck his forehead
with his hand. He only now realised it, though Alyosha had
just told him of the insult, and Katerina Ivanovna’s cry:
‘Your brother is a scoundrel.’
‘Yes, perhaps, I really did tell Grushenka about that ‘fatal
day,’ as Katya calls it. Yes, I did tell her, I remember! It was
that time at Mokroe. I was drunk, the Gypsies were sing-
ing... But I was sobbing. I was sobbing then, kneeling and
praying to Katya’s image, and Grushenka understood it.
She understood it all then. I remember, she cried herself....
Damn it all! But it’s bound to be so now.... Then she cried,
but now ‘the dagger in the heart’! That’s how women are.’
He looked down and sank into thought.
‘Yes, I am a scoundrel, a thorough scoundrel’ he said sud-
denly, in a gloomy voice. ‘It doesn’t matter whether I cried
or not, I’m a scoundrel! Tell her I accept the name, if that’s
any comfort. Come, that’s enough. Good-bye. It’s no use
talking! It’s not amusing. You go your way and I mine. And
I don’t want to see you again except as a last resource. Good-
bye, Alexey!’
He warmly pressed Alyosha’s hand, and still looking
down, without raising his head, as though tearing himself
away, turned rapidly towards the town.
Alyosha looked after him, unable to believe he would go