hat?"

"He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that
on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but
sorry to be--losing a friend. But that was acting, too--you were playing a
part--as in a theater!"

"In a theater? What? What do you mean?" exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna,
profoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning.

"Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist
in telling him to his face that it's fortunate he is going," said Alyosha
breathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit down.

"What are you talking about? I don't understand."

"I don't understand myself.... I seemed to see in a flash ... I know I am
not saying it properly, but I'll say it all the same," Alyosha went on in
the same shaking and broken voice. "What I see is that perhaps you don't
love Dmitri at all ... and never have, from the beginning.... And Dmitri,
too, has never loved you ... and only esteems you.... I really don't know
how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth ... for
nobody here will tell the truth."

"What truth?" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and there was an hysterical ring in
her voice.

"I'll tell you," Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as though he were
jumping from the top of a house. "Call Dmitri; I will fetch him--and let
him come here and take your hand and take Ivan's and join your hands. For
you're torturing Ivan, simply because you love him--and torturing him,
because you love Dmitri through 'self-laceration'--with an unreal
love--because you've persuaded yourself."

Alyosha broke off and was silent.

"You ... you ... you are a little religious idiot--that's what you are!"
Katerina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving
with anger.

Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.

"You are mistaken, my good Alyosha," he said, with an expression Alyosha
had never seen in his face before--an expression of youthful sincerity and
strong, irresistibly frank feeling. "Katerina Ivanovna has never cared for
me! She has known all the time that I cared for her--though I never said a
word of my love to her--she knew, but she didn't care for me. I have never
been her friend either, not for one moment; she is too proud to need my
friendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged
with me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving
from