rother. But damn it all, wait a bit!... Eat and drink and be merry,
meanwhile. Don't you want money?"

"Later on, perhaps," smiled Maximov.

"All right, all right...."

Mitya's head was burning. He went outside to the wooden balcony which ran
round the whole building on the inner side, overlooking the courtyard. The
fresh air revived him. He stood alone in a dark corner, and suddenly
clutched his head in both hands. His scattered thoughts came together; his
sensations blended into a whole and threw a sudden light into his mind. A
fearful and terrible light! "If I'm to shoot myself, why not now?" passed
through his mind. "Why not go for the pistols, bring them here, and here,
in this dark dirty corner, make an end?" Almost a minute he stood,
undecided. A few hours earlier, when he had been dashing here, he was
pursued by disgrace, by the theft he had committed, and that blood, that
blood!... But yet it was easier for him then. Then everything was over: he
had lost her, given her up. She was gone, for him--oh, then his death
sentence had been easier for him; at least it had seemed necessary,
inevitable, for what had he to stay on earth for?

But now? Was it the same as then? Now one phantom, one terror at least was
at an end: that first, rightful lover, that fateful figure had vanished,
leaving no trace. The terrible phantom had turned into something so small,
so comic; it had been carried into the bedroom and locked in. It would
never return. She was ashamed, and from her eyes he could see now whom she
loved. Now he had everything to make life happy ... but he could not go on
living, he could not; oh, damnation! "O God! restore to life the man I
knocked down at the fence! Let this fearful cup pass from me! Lord, thou
hast wrought miracles for such sinners as me! But what, what if the old
man's alive? Oh, then the shame of the other disgrace I would wipe away. I
would restore the stolen money. I'd give it back; I'd get it somehow....
No trace of that shame will remain except in my heart for ever! But no,
no; oh, impossible cowardly dreams! Oh, damnation!"

Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and
ran back to the room--to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one
moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of
disgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. "To her, to her alone,
to see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget everything, if
only for t