“Mitya, Mitya, I did love him!” she began in a whisper. “I loved him so, all these five years, all, all this while! Did I love him, or only my spite? No, him! Oh, him! It’s a lie that I loved only my spite and not him! Mitya, I was just seventeen then, he was so tender with me, so merry, he sang me songs ... Or did he only seem that way to me, to a foolish girl ... ? And now, Lord, it’s not the same man, not him at all. And it’s not his face, not his at all. I didn’t even recognize his face. I was driving here with Timofei and kept thinking, all the way I kept thinking: ‘How shall I meet him, what shall I say, how shall we look at each other ... ?’ My soul was frozen, and then it was as if he emptied a bucket of slops on me. He talks like a schoolmaster: it’s all so learned, so pompous, he greeted me so pompously I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get a word in. At first I thought he was embarrassed in front of the other one, the tall one. I sat looking at them and thought: why is it I don’t know how to speak with him now? You know, it’s his wife that did it to him, the one he married then, after hedroppedme ... She’s the one that changed him. What shame, Mitya! Oh, I’m ashamed, Mitya, ashamed, so ashamed for my whole life! Cursed, cursed be those five years, cursed!” And again she dissolved in tears, yet without letting go of Mitya’s hand, holding on to it firmly.
“Mitya, my dear, wait, don’t go, I want to tell you something,” she whispered, and suddenly looked up at him. “Listen, tell me whom I love? I love one man here. Who is it? You tell me.” A smile lighted on her face swollen with tears, her eyes shone in the semidarkness. “Tonight a falcon walked in, and my heart sank inside me. ‘You fool, this is the one you love,’ my heart whispered to me at once. You walked in and brightened everything. ‘What is he afraid of?’ I thought. And you really were afraid, quite afraid, you couldn’t speak. ‘He’s not afraid of them—how can he be afraid of anyone? It’s me he’s afraid of, just me.’ But Fenya did tell you, you little fool, how I shouted to Alyosha out the window that I loved Mitenka for one hour, and am now going off to love ... another. Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool to think I could love another after you! Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love me? Do you?”
She jumped up and grasped him by the shoulders with both hands. Mute with rapture, Mitya gazed into her eyes, at her face, her smile, and suddenly, embracing her firmly, began kissing her.
“Will you forgive me for tormenting you? I tormented all of you from spite. I drove that old man out of his mind on purpose, just from spite ... Do you remember how you once drank at my place and broke the glass? I remembered it, and today I, too, broke a glass as I drank to ‘my base heart.’ Mitya, my falcon, why aren’t you kissing me? You kissed me once and tore yourself away, to look, to listen ... Why listen to me! Kiss me, kiss me harder, like this! Let’s love, if we’re going to love! I’ll be your slave now, your lifelong slave! It’s sweet to be a slave...! Kiss me! Beat me, torment me, do something to me ... Oh, how I deserve to be tormented ... Stop! Wait, not now, I don’t want it to be like that ... ,” she suddenly pushed him away. “Go, Mitka, I’ll drink wine now, I want to get drunk, I’m going to get drunk and dance, I want to, I want to!”
She broke away from him and went out through the curtain. Mitya followed after her like a drunk man. “Come what may, whatever happens now, I’ll give the whole world for one minute,” flashed through his head. Grushenka indeed drank another glass of champagne at one gulp and suddenly became very tipsy. She sat in her former place, in the armchair, with a blissful smile. Her cheeks were glowing, her lips were burning, her bright eyes turned bleary, her passionate gaze beckoned. Even Kalganov felt a stab in his heart and went up to her.
“Did you feel how I kissed you while you were sleeping?” she babbled to him. “I’m drunk now, that’s what ... And you, aren’t you drunk? And why isn’t Mitya drinking? Why aren’t you drinking, Mitya? I drank and you’re not drinking ...”
