Alyosha stopped, because he caught his breath. In spite of his ill‐humor Rakitin looked at him with astonishment. He had never expected such a tirade from the gentle Alyosha.
“She’s found some one to plead her cause! Why, are you in love with her? Agrafena Alexandrovna, our monk’s really in love with you, you’ve made a conquest!” he cried, with a coarse laugh.
Grushenka lifted her head from the pillow and looked at Alyosha with a tender smile shining on her tear‐stained face.
“Let him alone, Alyosha, my cherub; you see what he is, he is not a person for you to speak to. Mihail Osipovitch,” she turned to Rakitin, “I meant to beg your pardon for being rude to you, but now I don’t want to. Alyosha, come to me, sit down here.” She beckoned to him with a happy smile. “That’s right, sit here. Tell me,” she shook him by the hand and peeped into his face, smiling, “tell me, do I love that man or not? the man who wronged me, do I love him or not? Before you came, I lay here in the dark, asking my heart whether I loved him. Decide for me, Alyosha, the time has come, it shall be as you say. Am I to forgive him or not?”
“But you have forgiven him already,” said Alyosha, smiling.
“Yes, I really have forgiven him,” Grushenka murmured thoughtfully. “What an abject heart! To my abject heart!” She snatched up a glass from the table, emptied it at a gulp, lifted it in the air and flung it on the floor. The glass broke with a crash. A little cruel line came into her smile.
“Perhaps I haven’t forgiven him, though,” she said, with a sort of menace in her voice, and she dropped her eyes to the ground as though she were talking to herself. “Perhaps my heart is only getting ready to forgive. I shall struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I’ve grown to love my tears in these five years.... Perhaps I only love my resentment, not him ...”
“Well, I shouldn’t care to be in his shoes,” hissed Rakitin.
“Well, you won’t be, Rakitin, you’ll never be in his shoes. You shall black my shoes, Rakitin, that’s the place you are fit for. You’ll never get a woman like me ... and he won’t either, perhaps ...”
“Won’t he? Then why are you dressed up like that?” said Rakitin, with a venomous sneer.