test jealousy of this new rival, who seemed to have sprung
out of the earth. If any other had appeared on the scene, he would have
been jealous at once, and would perhaps have stained his fierce hands with
blood again. But as he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no
hostility even, for the man who had been her first lover.... It is true he
had not yet seen him.

"Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his; this was
her first love which, after five years, she had not forgotten; so she had
loved him only for those five years, and I, how do I come in? What right
have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! What am I now? Now everything is
over apart from the officer--even if he had not appeared, everything would
be over ..."

These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had been
capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His present
plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya's first words, it
had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a flash, with all its
consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution, there was confusion in
his soul, an agonizing confusion: his resolution did not give him peace.
There was so much behind that tortured him. And it seemed strange to him,
at moments, to think that he had written his own sentence of death with
pen and paper: "I punish myself," and the paper was lying there in his
pocket, ready; the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next
morning, he would meet the first warm ray of "golden-haired Phoebus."

And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left behind
and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought of it sank
into his heart with despair. There was one moment when he felt an impulse
to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out his loaded pistol,
and to make an end of everything without waiting for the dawn. But that
moment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on, "devouring space,"
and as he drew near his goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took
more and more complete possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful
images that had been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if
only for a moment, if only from a distance!

"She's now with _him_," he thought, "now I shall see what she looks like
with him, her first love, and that's all I want." Never had this woman,
who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such love in his