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 Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For even that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult—that’s what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but, believe me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him—that’s your ‘laceration.’ You love