“Don’t you dare say such a thing to me, you enchantress, you sorceress! Scorn you? I shall kiss your lower lip one more time. It seems a little swollen, then let it be more swollen, and more, and more ... See how she laughs! Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s a joy for the heart just to look at this angel...”
Alyosha blushed, and an imperceptible trembling came over him.
“You are too kind to me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all worthy of your caresses.” “Not worthy! She is not worthy!” Katerina Ivanovna again exclaimed with the same fervor. “You know, Alexei Fyodorovich, we have a fantastic little head, we’re willful and have a proud, proud little heart! We are noble, Alexei Fyodorovich, we are magnanimous, did you know that? Only we have been so unhappy! We were too ready to make all sorts of sacrifices for an unworthy, perhaps, or frivolous man. There was one man, he was an officer, too, we fell in love with him, we offered him everything, it was long ago, five years ago, and he forgot us, he got married. Now he’s a widower, he’s written, he’s coming here—and, you know, it is only him, only him and no one else that we love now and have loved all our life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again, and for all these five years she has been unhappy. But who will reproach her, who will boast of her favors? Only that bedridden old man, a merchant—but he has been more of a father, a friend, a protector to us. He found us in despair, in torment, abandoned by the one we loved so ... why, she wanted to drown herself then, and this old man saved her, saved her!”
“You defend me too much, dear young lady; you are in too much of a hurry with everything,” Grushenka drawled again.
“Defend? Is it for me to defend you? Would we even dare to defend you here? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at this plump, lovely little hand, Alexei Fyodorovich; do you see it? It brought me happiness and resurrected me, and now I am going to kiss it, back and front, here, here, and here!” And as if in rapture, she kissed the indeed lovely, if perhaps too plump, hand of Grushenka three times. The latter, offering her hand with a nervous, pealing, lovely little laugh, watched the “dear young lady,” apparently pleased at having her hand kissed like that. “Maybe a little too much rapture,” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. He blushed. All the while his heart was somehow peculiarly uneasy.
“Won’t you make me ashamed, dear young lady, kissing my hand like that in front of Alexei Fyodorovich!”
“How could I possibly make you ashamed?” said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how poorly you understand me!”
“But perhaps you do not quite understand me either, dear young lady. Perhaps I’m more wicked than you see on the surface. I have a wicked heart, I’m willful. I charmed poor Dmitri Fyodorovich that time only to laugh at him.”
“But now it will be you who save him. You gave your word. You will make him listen to reason, you will reveal to him that you love another man, that you have loved him for a long time, and he is now offering you his hand...”
“Ah, no, I never gave you my word. It’s you who were saying all that, but I didn’t give my word.” “Then I must have misunderstood you,” Katerina Ivanovna said softly, turning a bit pale, as it were. “You promised...”
“Ah, no, my young lady, my angel, I promised nothing,” Grushenka interrupted softly and calmly, with the same gay and innocent expression. “Now you see, worthy young lady, how wicked and willful I am next to you. Whatever I want, I will do. Maybe I just promised you something, but now I’m thinking: what if I like him again all of a sudden—Mitya, I mean—because I did like him once very much, I liked him for almost a whole hour. So, maybe I’ll go now and tell him to stay with me starting today ... That’s how fickle I am...”
“You just said ... something quite different. . . ,” Katerina Ivanovna said faintly.
“Ah, I just said! But I have such a tender, foolish heart. Think what he’s suffered because of me! What if I go home and suddenly take pity on him—what then?”
“I didn’t expect...”
“Eh, young lady, how kind and noble you turn out to be next to me. So now perhaps you’ll stop loving such a fool as I am, seeing my character. Give me your little hand, my angel,” she asked tenderly, and took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand as if in reverence. “Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your little hand and kiss it, just as you did to me. You kissed mine three times, and for that I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even. And so I shall, and then let it be as God wills; maybe I’ll be your complete slave and want to please you in everything like a slave. As God wills, so let it be, with no deals or promises between us. What a hand, what a dear little hand you have, what a hand! My dear young lady, beauty that you are, my impossible beauty!”
