The child with fingers cut off is nice, and to be despised is nice..."
And she laughed in Alyosha's face, a feverish malicious laugh.
"Do you know, Alyosha, do you know, I should like- Alyosha, save me!" She suddenly jumped from the couch, rushed to him and seized him with both hands. "Save me!" she almost groaned. "Is there anyone in the world I could tell what I've told you?
I've told you the truth, the truth.
I shall kill myself, because I loathe everything!
I don't want to live, because I loathe everything!
I loathe everything, everything.
Alyosha, why don't you love me in the least?" she finished in a frenzy.
"But I do love you!" answered Alyosha warmly.
"And will you weep over me, will you?"
"Yes."
"Not because I won't be your wife, but simply weep for me?"
"Yes."
"Thank you!
It's only your tears I want.
Everyone else may punish me and trample me under foot, everyone, everyone, not excepting anyone.
For I don't love anyone.
Do you hear, not anyone!
On the contrary, I hate him!
Go, Alyosha; it's time you went to your brother"; she tore herself away from him suddenly.
"How can I leave you like this?" said Alyosha, almost in alarm.
"Go to your brother, the prison will be shut; go, here's your hat.
Give my love to Mitya, go, go!"
And she almost forcibly pushed Alyosha out of the door.
He looked at her with pained surprise, when he was suddenly aware of a letter in his right hand, a tiny letter folded up tight and sealed.
He glanced at it and instantly read the address, "To Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov."
He looked quickly at Lise.
Her face had become almost menacing.
"Give it to him, you must give it to him!" she ordered him, trembling and beside herself. "To-day, at once, or I'll poison myself!
That's why I sent for you."
And she slammed the door quickly.
The bolt clicked.
Alyosha put the note in his pocket and went straight downstairs, without going back to Madame Hohlakov; forgetting her, in fact.
As soon as Alyosha had gone, Lise unbolted the door, opened it a little, put her finger in the crack and slammed the door with all her might, pinching her finger.
Ten seconds after, releasing her finger, she walked softly, slowly to her chair, sat up straight in it and looked intently at her blackened finger and at the blood that oozed from under the nail.
Her lips were quivering and she kept whispering rapidly to herself:
"I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!"
Chapter 4.
A Hymn and a Secret
IT was quite late (days are short in November) when Alyosha rang at the prison gate.
It was beginning to get dusk.
But Alyosha knew that he would be admitted without difficulty.
Things were managed in our little town, as everywhere else.
At first, of course, on the conclusion of the preliminary inquiry, relations and a few other persons could only obtain interviews with Mitya by going through certain inevitable formalities. But later, though the formalities were not relaxed, exceptions were made for some, at least, of Mitya's visitors.
So much so, that sometimes the interviews with the prisoner in the room set aside for the purpose were practically tete-a-tete.
These exceptions, however, were few in number; only Grushenka, Alyosha and Rakitin were treated like this.
But the captain of the police, Mihail Mihailovitch, was very favourably disposed to Grushenka.
His abuse of her at Mokroe weighed on the old man's conscience, and when he learned the whole story, he completely changed his view of her.
And strange to say, though he was firmly persuaded of his guilt, yet after Mitya was once in prison, the old man came to take a more and more lenient view of him.
"He was a man of good heart, perhaps," he thought, "who had come to grief from drinking and dissipation."