The Brothers Karamazov
He would run away and she listened to the singing and
looked at the dancing, though her eyes followed him wher-
ever he went. But in another quarter of an hour she would
call him once more and again he would run back to her.
‘Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me,
and my coming here yesterday? From whom did you first
hear it?’
And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly,
incoherently, feverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning,
and stopping abruptly.
‘What are you frowning at?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I’d give ten years of my
life for him to get well, to know he was all right!’
‘Well, never mind him, if he’s ill. So you meant to shoot
yourself to-morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such
reckless fellows as you,’ she lisped, with a rather halting
tongue. ‘So you would go any length for me, eh? Did you re-
ally mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you stupid? No, wait
a little. To-morrow I may have something to say to you....
I won’t say it to-day, but to-morrow. You’d like it to be to-
day? No, I don’t want to to-day. Come, go along now, go and
amuse yourself.’
Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and
uneasy.
‘Why are you sad? I see you’re sad.... Yes, I see it,’ she add-
ed, looking intently into his eyes. ‘Though you keep kissing
the peasants and shouting, I see something. No, be merry.
I’m merry; you be merry, too.... I love somebody here. Guess
who it is. Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep, poor dear, he’s