“Talk now! Where is she? Who is she with in Mokroye?” he shouted in a frenzy.

Both women shrieked.

“Aie! I’ll tell you. Aie, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dear, I’ll tell you all right now, I won’t hide anything,” Fenya rattled out, frightened to death. “She went to Mokroye to see the officer.”

“What officer?” Mitya shouted.

“Her former officer, the same one from before, from five years ago, who left her and went away,” Fenya rattled out in the same patter.

Dmitri Fyodorovich relaxed his grip on her throat and let his hands fall. He stood before her, speechless and pale as death, but one could see from his eyes that he had understood everything at once, everything, everything all at once, at half a word, had understood it to the last detail and figured it all out. It was not for poor Fenya, of course, to notice at that moment whether he had understood or not. She sat on the chest where she had been sitting when he ran in, and remained like that, trembling all over, holding her hands out in front of her as if trying to protect herself, and froze in that position. She stared at him fixedly, her eyes terrified, her pupils dilated with fear. Worse still, both his hands were stained with blood. On the way, as he was running, he must have touched his forehead with them, wiping the sweat from his face, so that he left red patches of smeared blood both on his forehead and on his right cheek. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics, and the old cook jumped up, staring crazily, and nearly passed out. Dmitri Fyodorovich stood for a moment, then suddenly dropped mechanically into a chair next to Fenya.

He sat there, not pondering exactly, but as if in fear, as if in some kind of stupor. But everything was clear as day: this officer—he knew about him, he knew everything perfectly well, knew it from Grushenka herself, knew that a month ago a letter had come from him. So for a month, for a whole month this affair had been going on in deep secret from him, up to the present arrival of this new man, and he had not even given him a thought! But how could he, how could he not give him a thought? Why had he simply forgotten about the officer, forgotten the moment he learned of him? That was the question that stood before him like some sort of bogey. And he indeed contemplated this bogey in fear, in cold fear.

But suddenly he began speaking gently and meekly with Fenya, like a gentle and affectionate child, as if he had quite forgotten that he had just frightened, offended, and tormented her so much. He suddenly began questioning Fenya with great and, in his position, even surprising precision. And Fenya, though she gazed wildly at his bloodstained hands, also began answering each of his questions with surprising readiness and haste, as if she were even hastening to lay the whole “truthful truth” before him. Little by little, and even with a sort of joy, she began giving him all the details, not wishing in the least to torment him, but as if she were hastening, with all her heart, to please him as much as she could. She also told him to the last detail about that day, the visit of Rakitin and Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had kept watch, how her mistress had driven off, and that she had called from the window to Alyosha to bow to him, Mitenka, and tell him he should “remember forever how she had loved him for one hour.” Hearing of the bow, Mitya suddenly grinned and a blush came to his pale cheeks. At that same moment, Fenya, now not the least bit afraid of her curiosity, said to him:

“But your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovich, they’re all covered with blood!”

“Yes,” Mitya answered mechanically, looked distractedly at his hands, and immediately forgot about them and about Fenya’s question. Again he sank into silence. Some twenty minutes had already passed since he ran in. His initial fear was gone, but he was evidently now totally possessed by some new, inflexible resolve. He suddenly stood up and smiled pensively.

“What has happened to you, sir?” Fenya said, pointing again at his hands; said with regret, as if she were now the person closest to him in his grief.

Mitya again looked at his hands.

“That’s blood, Fenya,” he said, looking at her with a strange expression, “that is human blood, and, my God, why was it shed? But ... Fenya ... there is a fence here” (he looked at her as though he were setting her a riddle), “a high fence, and fearful to look at, but ... tomorrow at dawn, when the sun soars aloft,’ Mitenka will jump over that fence ... You don’t understand about the fence, Fenya, but never mind ... it doesn’t matter, tomorrow you will hear and understand everything ... and now, farewell! I won’t interfere, I’ll remove myself, I’ll know how to remove myself. Live, my joy ... you loved me for one little hour, so remember Mitenka Karamazov forever ... She always called me Mitenka, remember?”

And with those words he suddenly walked out of the kitchen. Fenya was almost more frightened by this exit than she had been earlier when he ran in and fell upon her.

Exactly ten minutes later, Dmitri Fyodorovich walked into the rooms of the young official, Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, to whom he had pawned his pistols earlier that day. It was then half past eight, and Pyotr Ilyich, having had his tea at home, had just dressed himself once more in his frock coat in order to set off to the “Metropolis” for a game of billiards. Mitya caught him as he was going out. Seeing him and his bloodstained face, the young man cried out:

“Lord! What’s with you?”

“So,” Mitya said quickly, “I’ve come for my pistols and brought you the money. Many thanks. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyich, please make it fast.”

Pyotr Ilyich grew more and more surprised: in Mitya’s hand he suddenly noticed a pile of money, and, what was more, he had walked in holding this pile as no one in the world holds money and comes walking in with it: he had all the bills in his right hand, and was holding his hand, as if for show, straight out in front of him. A boy, the official’s servant, who had met Mitya in the hallway, recounted later that he had walked through the front door just like that, with the money in his hand, which means that he had also been walking through the streets like that, carrying the money before him in his right hand. It was all in iridescent hundred-rouble bills, and he was holding them with his bloodied fingers. Afterwards, to the further questioning of certain interested persons as to how much money there was, Pyotr Ilyich replied that it was difficult to tell then by eye, maybe two thousand, maybe three, but it was a big, “hefty” wad. Dmitri Fyodorovich, as Perkhotin also testified later, “was not quite himself, as it were, not that he was drunk, but he seemed to be in some sort of ecstasy, quite distracted, and at the same time apparently concentrated, as if he were thinking about something, getting at something, but could not make up his mind. He was in a great hurry, responded abruptly in a very strange manner, and at moments seemed not grieved at all but even cheerful.” “But what is it, what’s happened?” Pyotr Ilyich shouted again, staring wildly at his visitor. “How did you get so covered with blood? Did you fall? Look!”

He seized Mitya by the elbow and placed him in front of a mirror. Mitya saw his bloodstained face, gave a start, and frowned wrathfully.

“Ah, the devil! Just what I need,” he muttered angrily, quickly shifted the bills from his right hand to his left, and convulsively snatched the handkerchief from his pocket. But the handkerchief, too, turned out to be all covered with blood (it was the same handkerchief he had used to wipe Grigory’s head and face): there was hardly a white spot left on it, and it had not merely begun to dry, but had stiffened into a ball and refused to be unfolded. Mitya angrily flung it to the floor.

“Eh, the devil! Have you got some rag ... to wipe myself off ... ?”