girl sitting here is my daughter Nina; I forgot to introduce her to you. She is a heavenly angel incarnate … who has flown down to us mortals, … if you can understand.”
“There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!” Varvara went on indignantly.
“And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool just now, she is a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good reason to call me so. Come along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an end.”
And, snatching Alyosha’s hand, he drew him out of the room into the street.
VII
And in the Open Air
“The air is fresh, but in my apartment it is not so in any sense of the word. Let us walk slowly, sir. I should be glad of your kind interest.”
“I too have something important to say to you,” observed Alyosha, “only I don’t know how to begin.”
“To be sure you must have business with me. You would never have looked in upon me without some object. Unless you come simply to complain of the boy, and that’s hardly likely. And, by the way, about the boy: I could not explain to you in there, but here I will describe that scene to you. My tow was thicker a week ago—I mean my beard. That’s the nickname they give to my beard, the schoolboys most of all. Well, your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch was pulling me by my beard, I’d done nothing, he was in a towering rage and happened to come upon me. He dragged me out of the tavern into the marketplace; at that moment the boys were coming out of school, and with them Ilusha. As soon as he saw me in such a state he