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She sent for me, she wanted to make a conquest of me, to win me over with her chocolate.... No, it’s a good thing it did end like that.” She smiled again. “But I am still afraid of your being angry.” “Yes, that’s really true,” Rakitin put in suddenly with genuine surprise. “Alyosha, she is really afraid of a chicken like you.”
“What of it?” Kolya thought fit to defend himself, though the praise was very sweet to him. “I am fagging away at Latin because I have to, because I promised my mother to pass my examination, and I think that whatever you do, it’s worth doing it well. But in my soul I have a profound contempt for the classics and all that fraud.... You don’t agree, Karamazov?” “Why ‘fraud’?” Alyosha smiled again.
How will you live all your life, if you don’t make up your mind to do it now?” “Better suffer all my life.” “You ought to go, you ought to go,” Alyosha repeated with merciless emphasis. “But why to-day, why at once?... I can’t leave our patient—” “You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don’t come, he will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on him!”
“You say that because I blushed,” Alyosha said suddenly. “I wasn’t blushing at what you were saying or at what you’ve done. I blushed because I am the same as you are.” “You? Come, that’s going a little too far!” I’m at the bottom step, and you’re above, somewhere about the thirteenth. That’s how I see it. But it’s all the same. Absolutely the same in kind.
“So you’ll hit a man from behind! They tell the truth, then, when they say that you attack on the sly,” said Alyosha, turning round again. This time the boy threw a stone savagely right into Alyosha’s face; but Alyosha just had time to guard himself, and the stone struck him on the elbow. “Aren’t you ashamed? What have I done to you?” he cried.
For the last two days he had been in such an inconceivable state of mind that he might easily have fallen ill with brain fever, as he said himself afterwards. Alyosha had not been able to find him the morning before, and Ivan had not succeeded in meeting him at the tavern on the same day. The people at his lodgings, by his orders, concealed his movements.
“No, it’s no use, it’s awful,” Kolya assented. “Do you know, Karamazov,” he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, “I feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back, I’d give anything in the world to do it.” “Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha. “What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to-night? He’ll be drunk, you know.” “Perhaps he will.
Meanwhile Grigory had got up from the floor, but still seemed stunned. Ivan and Alyosha ran after their father. In the third room something was heard to fall on the floor with a ringing crash: it was a large glass vase—not an expensive one—on a marble pedestal which Dmitri had upset as he ran past it. “At him!” shouted the old man. “Help!”
Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and with a peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the details of the important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between the two elder brothers.
Suddenly she snatched his hand and impulsively kissed it three times. “Ah, Lise, what a good thing!” cried Alyosha joyfully. “You know, I was perfectly sure you were in earnest.” “Sure? Upon my word!” She put aside his hand, but did not leave go of it, blushing hotly, and laughing a little happy laugh. “I kiss his hand and he says, ‘What a good thing!’ ” But her reproach was undeserved.
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