Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com she tormented me! It certainly was sitting by a ‘laceration.’
Ah, she knew how I loved her! She loved me and not Dmitri,’
Ivan insisted gaily. ‘Her feeling for Dmitri was simply a self-
laceration. All I told her just now was perfectly true, but the
worst of it is, it may take her fifteen or twenty years to find
out that she doesn’t care for Dmitri, and loves me whom she
torments, and perhaps she may never find it out at all, in
spite of her lesson to-day. Well, it’s better so; I can simply go
away for good. By the way, how is she now? What happened
after I departed?’
Alyosha told him she had been hysterical, and that she
was now, he heard, unconscious and delirious.
‘Isn’t Madame Hohlakov laying it on?’
‘I think not.’
‘I must find out. Nobody dies of hysterics, though. They
don’t matter. God gave woman hysterics as a relief. I won’t
go to her at all. Why push myself forward again?’
‘But you told her that she had never cared for you.’
‘I did that on purpose. Alyosha, shall I call for some
champagne? Let us drink to my freedom. Ah, if only you
knew how glad I am!’
‘No, brother, we had better not drink,’ said Alyosha sud-
denly. ‘Besides I feel somehow depressed.’
‘Yes, you’ve been depressed a long time, I’ve noticed it.’
‘Have you settled to go to-morrow morning, then?’
‘Morning? I didn’t say I should go in the morning.... But
perhaps it may be the morning. Would you believe it, I
dined here to-day only to avoid dining with the old man, I
loathe him so. I should have left long ago, so far as he is con-