yodorovitch, if I had, I wouldn't give it to
you. In the first place I never lend money. Lending money means losing
friends. And I wouldn't give it to you particularly. I wouldn't give it
you, because I like you and want to save you, for all you need is the
gold-mines, the gold-mines, the gold-mines!"

"Oh, the devil!" roared Mitya, and with all his might brought his fist
down on the table.

"Aie! Aie!" cried Madame Hohlakov, alarmed, and she flew to the other end
of the drawing-room.

Mitya spat on the ground, and strode rapidly out of the room, out of the
house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like one possessed,
and beating himself on the breast, on the spot where he had struck himself
two days previously, before Alyosha, the last time he saw him in the dark,
on the road. What those blows upon his breast signified, _on that spot_,
and what he meant by it--that was, for the time, a secret which was known
to no one in the world, and had not been told even to Alyosha. But that
secret meant for him more than disgrace; it meant ruin, suicide. So he had
determined, if he did not get hold of the three thousand that would pay
his debt to Katerina Ivanovna, and so remove from his breast, from _that
spot on his breast_, the shame he carried upon it, that weighed on his
conscience. All this will be fully explained to the reader later on, but
now that his last hope had vanished, this man, so strong in appearance,
burst out crying like a little child a few steps from the Hohlakovs'
house. He walked on, and not knowing what he was doing, wiped away his
tears with his fist. In this way he reached the square, and suddenly
became aware that he had stumbled against something. He heard a piercing
wail from an old woman whom he had almost knocked down.

"Good Lord, you've nearly killed me! Why don't you look where you're
going, scapegrace?"

"Why, it's you!" cried Mitya, recognizing the old woman in the dark. It
was the old servant who waited on Samsonov, whom Mitya had particularly
noticed the day before.

"And who are you, my good sir?" said the old woman, in quite a different
voice. "I don't know you in the dark."

"You live at Kuzma Kuzmitch's. You're the servant there?"

"Just so, sir, I was only running out to Prohoritch's.... But I don't know
you now."

"Tell me, my good woman, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?" said Mitya,
beside himself with suspense. "I saw her to the house some time ago."

"She has