"I don't have contempt for labor, but for you when you speak about labor."

"If you wanted to be an honest woman, you should have gone to work as a washerwoman."

The two women stood up, pale-faced, and looked at each other.

"Aglaya, stop! This is unfair," the prince cried out like a lost man. Rogozhin was no longer smiling, but listened with compressed lips and crossed arms.

"Here, look at her," Nastasya Filippovna said, trembling with spite, "at this young lady! And I took her for an angel! Have you come to see me without your governess, Aglaya Ivanovna? .. . And do you want ... do you want me to tell you straight out, here and now, without embellishments, why you came? You were scared, that's why."

"Scared of you?" asked Aglaya, beside herself with naïve and impudent amazement that the woman would dare to address her that way.

"Yes, of me! You're afraid of me, since you decided to come and see me. If you're afraid of someone, you don't despise him. And to think that I respected you, even up to this very minute! But do you know why you're afraid of me and what your main purpose is now? You wanted to find out personally whether he loves me more than you or not, because you're terribly jealous . . ."

"He has already told me that he hates you . . ." Aglaya barely murmured.

"Maybe; maybe I'm not worthy of him, only . . . only I think you're lying! He can't hate me, and he couldn't have said that! However, I'm prepared to forgive you . .. considering your position . . . only all the same I did think better of you; I thought you were more intelligent, yes, and even better-looking, by God! . . . Well, so take your treasure . . . here he is, looking at you, unable to collect his wits, take him for yourself, but on one condition: get out right now! This minute! . . ." She fell into an armchair and dissolved in tears. But suddenly

something new began to gleam in her eyes; she looked intently and fixedly at Aglaya and got up from her seat:

"Or if you like, my girl, right now . . . I'll or-der him, do you hear? I'll simply or-der him, and he'll drop you at once and stay with me forever, and marry me, and you'll run home alone! Would you like that, my girl, would you?" she cried like a crazy woman, perhaps almost not believing herself that she could utter such words.

Aglaya rushed to the door in fear, but stopped in the doorway as if rooted there and listened.

"Would you like me to throw Rogozhin out? You thought, my girl, that I was going to up and marry Rogozhin for your good pleasure? Now I'll shout in front of you: 'Go, Rogozhin!' and say to the prince: 'Remember what you promised?' Lord! Why did I humiliate myself so before them? Didn't you assure me yourself, Prince, that you'd follow me whatever happened and never leave me; that you loved me, and forgave me everything, and re . . . resp . . . Yes, you said that, too! And I ran away from you only in order to unbind you, but now I don't want to! Why did she treat me like a loose woman? Ask Rogozhin how loose I am, he'll tell you! Now, when she has disgraced me, and that right in front of you, are you going to turn away from me and go out arm in arm with her? Then may you be cursed for that, because you're the only one I trusted. Go, Rogozhin, I don't need you!" she cried, almost oblivious, struggling to free the words from her breast, her face distorted and her lips parched, obviously not believing one drop of her own bravado, but at the same time wishing to prolong the moment if only for a second and deceive herself. The impulse was so strong that she might have died, or so at least it seemed to the prince. "Here he is, look, my girl!" she finally cried out to Aglaya, pointing at the prince with her hand. "If he doesn't come to me right now, if he doesn't take me and drop you, then you can have him, I give him up, I don't need him! . . ."

Both she and Aglaya stopped as if in expectation, and they both gave him mad looks. But he may not have understood all the force of this challenge, even certainly did not, one may say. He only saw before him the desperate, insane face, because of which, as he had once let slip to Aglaya, "his heart was forever pierced." He could no longer bear it and with entreaty and reproach turned to Aglaya, pointing to Nastasya Filippovna:

"It's not possible! She's ... so unhappy!"

But that was all he managed to say, going dumb under Aglaya's terrible look. That look expressed so much suffering, and at the same time such boundless hatred, that he clasped his hands, cried out, and rushed to her, but it was already too late! She could not bear even a moment of hesitation in him, covered her face with her hands, cried: "Oh, my God!"—and rushed out of the room, Rogozhin going after her to unlock the street door.

The prince also ran, but arms seized him on the threshold. Nastasya Filippovna's stricken, distorted face looked at him point-blank, and her blue lips moved, saying:

"After her? After her? . . ."

She fell unconscious in his arms. He picked her up, brought her into the room, laid her in an armchair, and stood over her in dull expectation. There was a glass of water on the table; Rogozhin, who had returned, snatched it up and sprinkled her face with water; she opened her eyes and for a moment understood nothing; but suddenly she looked around, gave a start, cried out, and rushed to the prince.

"Mine! Mine!" she cried. "Is the proud young lady gone? Ha, ha, ha!" she laughed hysterically, "ha, ha, ha! I wanted to give him to that young lady! But why? What for? Madwoman! Madwoman! . . . Get out, Rogozhin, ha, ha, ha!"

Rogozhin looked at them intently, did not say a word, took his hat, and left. Ten minutes later the prince was sitting beside Nastasya Filippovna, gazing at her without tearing his eyes away, and stroking her dear head and face with both hands, like a little child. He laughed when she laughed and was ready to weep at her tears. He did not say anything, but listened intently to her fitful, rapturous, and incoherent babbling, hardly understood anything, but smiled quietly, and as soon as it seemed to him that she had begun to be anguished again, or to weep, or reproach, or complain, he would at once begin again to stroke her dear head and tenderly pass his hands over her cheeks, comforting and reassuring her like a child.

IX

Two weeks went by after the events recounted in the last chapter, and the position of the characters in our story changed so much that it is extremely difficult for us to set out on the

continuation without special explanations. And yet we feel that we must limit ourselves to the simple statement of facts, as far as possible without special explanations, and for a very simple reason: because we ourselves, in many cases, have difficulty explaining what happened. Such a warning on our part must appear quite strange and unclear to the reader: how recount that of which we have neither a clear understanding nor a personal opinion? Not to put ourselves in a still more false position, we had better try to explain things with an example, and perhaps the benevolent reader will understand precisely what our difficulty is, the more so as this example will not be a digression, but, on the contrary, a direct and immediate continuation of the story.

Two weeks later, that is, at the beginning of July, and over the course of those two weeks, the story of our hero, and especially the last adventure of that story, turned into a strange, rather amusing, almost unbelievable, and at the same time almost graphic anecdote, which gradually spread through all the streets neighboring the dachas of Lebedev, Ptitsyn, Darya Alexeevna, the Epanchins, in short, over almost the whole town and even its environs. Almost all of society—the locals, the summer people, those who came for the music—everyone began telling one and the same story, in a thousand different versions, about a certain prince who, having caused a scandal in an honorable and well-known house, and having rejected the daughter of that house, already his fiancée, had been enticed away by a well-known tart, had broken all his former connections, and, regardless of everything, regardless of threats, regardless of general public indignation, intended to marry the disgraced woman one of those days, right there in Pavlovsk, openly, publicly, with head held high and looking everyone straight in the eye. The anecdote was becoming so embroidered with scandals, so many well-known and important persons were mixed up in it, it was endowed with such a variety of fantastic and mysterious nuances, and, on the other hand, it was presented in such irrefutable and graphic facts, that the general curiosity and gossip were, of course, quite excusable. The most subtle, clever, and at the same time plausible interpretation belonged to several serious gossips, from that stratum of sensible people who, in every society, always hasten first of all to explain an event to others, finding in it a vocation, and often also a consolation. According to their interpretation, a young man, of good family, a prince, almost wealthy, a fool, but a democrat, and gone crazy over modern nihilism, which