Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com which he now saw Alyosha. ‘Alyosha, do you know where
we had better go?’ he brought out at last timidly, and in-
sinuatingly.
‘I don’t care... where you like.’
‘Let’s go to Grushenka, eh? Will you come?’ pronounced
Rakitin at last, trembling with timid suspense.
‘Let’s go to Grushenka,’ Alyosha answered calmly, at
once, and this prompt and calm agreement was such a sur-
prise to Rakitin that he almost started back.
‘Well! I say!’ he cried in amazement, but seizing Alyosha
firmly by the arm be led him along the path, still dreading
that he would change his mind.
They walked along in silence; Rakitin was positively
afraid to talk.
‘And how glad she will be, how delighted!’ he muttered,
but lapsed into silence again. And indeed it was not to please
Grushenka he was taking Alyosha to her. He was a practical
person and never undertook anything without a prospect of
gain for himself. His object in this case was twofold, first a
revengeful desire to see ‘the downfall of the righteous,’ and
Alyosha’s fall ‘from the saints to the sinners,’ over which he
was already gloating in his imagination, and in the second
place he had in view a certain material gain for himself, of
which more will be said later.
‘So the critical moment has come,’ he thought to himself
with spiteful glee, ‘and we shall catch it on the hop, for it’s
just what we want.’