a rope in a minute, and braces besides, and why go on burdening
the earth, dishonoring it with my vile presence? And then I heard you
coming--Heavens, it was as though something flew down to me suddenly. So
there is a man, then, whom I love. Here he is, that man, my dear little
brother, whom I love more than any one in the world, the only one I love
in the world. And I loved you so much, so much at that moment that I
thought, 'I'll fall on his neck at once.' Then a stupid idea struck me, to
have a joke with you and scare you. I shouted, like a fool, 'Your money!'
Forgive my foolery--it was only nonsense, and there's nothing unseemly in
my soul.... Damn it all, tell me what's happened. What did she say? Strike
me, crush me, don't spare me! Was she furious?"

"No, not that.... There was nothing like that, Mitya. There--I found them
both there."

"Both? Whom?"

"Grushenka at Katerina Ivanovna's."

Dmitri was struck dumb.

"Impossible!" he cried. "You're raving! Grushenka with her?"

Alyosha described all that had happened from the moment he went in to
Katerina Ivanovna's. He was ten minutes telling his story. He can't be
said to have told it fluently and consecutively, but he seemed to make it
clear, not omitting any word or action of significance, and vividly
describing, often in one word, his own sensations. Dmitri listened in
silence, gazing at him with a terrible fixed stare, but it was clear to
Alyosha that he understood it all, and had grasped every point. But as the
story went on, his face became not merely gloomy, but menacing. He
scowled, he clenched his teeth, and his fixed stare became still more
rigid, more concentrated, more terrible, when suddenly, with incredible
rapidity, his wrathful, savage face changed, his tightly compressed lips
parted, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch broke into uncontrolled, spontaneous
laughter. He literally shook with laughter. For a long time he could not
speak.

"So she wouldn't kiss her hand! So she didn't kiss it; so she ran away!"
he kept exclaiming with hysterical delight; insolent delight it might have
been called, if it had not been so spontaneous. "So the other one called
her tigress! And a tigress she is! So she ought to be flogged on a
scaffold? Yes, yes, so she ought. That's just what I think; she ought to
have been long ago. It's like this, brother, let her be punished, but I
must get better first. I understand the queen of impudence. That's her all
over! You saw her a