ld not have given
any definite account of his hopes, his expectations, or even his desires.

Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown
certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something
quite different. "Is it loathing for my father's house?" he wondered.
"Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it's the last time I shall
cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it's not that
either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had with
him? For so many years I've been silent with the whole world and not
deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like that."
It certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful
inexperience and vanity--vexation at having failed to express himself,
especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had certainly
been reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must have done
indeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. "I feel sick with
depression and yet I can't tell what I want. Better not think, perhaps."

Ivan tried "not to think," but that, too, was no use. What made his
depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of casual,
external character--he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to be
standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude itself
upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or conversation that
for a long time one does not notice it, yet it irritates and almost
torments one till at last one realizes, and removes the offending object,
often quite a trifling and ridiculous one--some article left about in the
wrong place, a handkerchief on the floor, a book not replaced on the
shelf, and so on.

At last, feeling very cross and ill-humored, Ivan arrived home, and
suddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed what was
fretting and worrying him.

On a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting enjoying the
coolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him Ivan knew that the
valet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was this man that his soul
loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and became clear. Just before,
when Alyosha had been telling him of his meeting with Smerdyakov, he had
felt a sudden twinge of gloom and loathing, which had immediately stirred
responsive anger in his heart. Afterwards, as he talked, Smerdyakov had
been forgotten for the time; but sti