The Brothers Karamazov
you little stupid, how I called to Alyosha out of the window
that I’d loved Mityenka for one hour, and that I was going
now to love... another. Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a
fool as to think I could love anyone after you? Do you for-
give me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love me?
Do you love me?’ She jumped up and held him with both
hands on his shoulders. Mitya, dumb with rapture, gazed
into her eyes, at her face, at her smile, and suddenly clasped
her tightly his arms and kissed her passionately.
‘You will forgive me for having tormented you? It was
through spite I tormented you all. It was for spite I drove
the old man out of his mind.... Do you remember how you
drank at my house one day and broke the wine-glass? I re-
membered that and I broke a glass to-day and drank ‘to my
vile heart.’ Mitya, my falcon, why don’t you kiss me? He
kissed me once, and now he draws back and looks and lis-
tens. Why listen to me? Kiss me, kiss me hard, that’s right.
if you love, well, then, love! I’ll be your slave now, your slave
for the rest of my life. It’s sweet to be a slave. Kiss me! Beat
me, ill-treat me, do what you will with me.... And I do de-
serve to suffer. Stay, wait, afterwards, I won’t have that...’ she
suddenly thrust him away. ‘Go along, Mitya, I’ll come and
have some wine, I want to be drunk, I’m going to get drunk
and dance; I must, I must!’ She tore herself away from him
and disappeared behind the curtain. Mitya followed like a
drunken man.
‘Yes, come what may — whatever may happen now, for
one minute I’d give the whole world,’ he thought. Grush-
enka did, in fact, toss off a whole glass of champagne at