Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com whether he understood or not. She remained sitting on the
trunk as she had been when he ran into the room, trembling
all over, holding her hands out before her as though trying
to defend herself. She seemed to have grown rigid in that
position. Her wide-opened, scared eyes were fixed immov-
ably upon him. And to make matters worse, both his hands
were smeared with blood. On the way, as he ran, he must
have touched his forehead with them, wiping off the per-
spiration, so that on his forehead and his right cheek were
bloodstained patches. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics.
The old cook had jumped up and was staring at him like a
mad woman, almost unconscious with terror.
Mitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to
a chair next to Fenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were,
terror-stricken, benumbed. Yet everything was clear as day:
that officer, he knew about him, he knew everything per-
fectly, he had known it from Grushenka herself, had known
that a letter had come from him a month before. So that for
a month, for a whole month, this had been going on, a se-
cret from him, till the very arrival of this new man, and he
had never thought of him! But how could he, how could he
not have thought of him? Why was it he had forgotten this
officer, like that, forgotten him as soon as he heard of him?
That was the question that faced him like some monstrous
thing. And he looked at this monstrous thing with horror,
growing cold with horror.
But suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and af-
fectionate child, he began speaking to Fenya as though he
had utterly forgotten how he had scared and hurt her just