drel, and not to you,
noble heart.' And add, too, that Grushenka loved him only one hour, only
one short hour she loved him--so let him remember that hour all his
life--say, 'Grushenka tells you to!' "

She ended in a voice full of sobs. The window was shut with a slam.

"H'm, h'm!" growled Rakitin, laughing, "she murders your brother Mitya and
then tells him to remember it all his life! What ferocity!"

Alyosha made no reply, he seemed not to have heard. He walked fast beside
Rakitin as though in a terrible hurry. He was lost in thought and moved
mechanically. Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had been touched
on an open wound. He had expected something quite different by bringing
Grushenka and Alyosha together. Something very different from what he had
hoped for had happened.

"He is a Pole, that officer of hers," he began again, restraining himself;
"and indeed he is not an officer at all now. He served in the customs in
Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, some puny little beggar of a
Pole, I expect. Lost his job, they say. He's heard now that Grushenka's
saved a little money, so he's turned up again--that's the explanation of
the mystery."

Again Alyosha seemed not to hear. Rakitin could not control himself.

"Well, so you've saved the sinner?" he laughed spitefully. "Have you
turned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils, eh?
So you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come to
pass!"

"Hush, Rakitin," Alyosha answered with an aching heart.

"So you despise me now for those twenty-five roubles? I've sold my friend,
you think. But you are not Christ, you know, and I am not Judas."

"Oh, Rakitin, I assure you I'd forgotten about it," cried Alyosha, "you
remind me of it yourself...."

But this was the last straw for Rakitin.

"Damnation take you all and each of you!" he cried suddenly, "why the
devil did I take you up? I don't want to know you from this time forward.
Go alone, there's your road!"

And he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Alyosha alone in the
dark. Alyosha came out of the town and walked across the fields to the
monastery.

Chapter IV. Cana Of Galilee

It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned
to the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special entrance. It had
struck nine o'clock--the hour of rest and repose after a day of such
agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the d