you like.”
“Let’s go to Grushenka, eh? Will you come?” pronounced Rakitin at last, trembling with timid suspense.
“Let’s go to Grushenka,” Alyosha answered calmly, at once, and this prompt and calm agreement was such a surprise to Rakitin that he almost started back.
“Well! I say!” he cried in amazement, but seizing Alyosha firmly by the arm he led him along the path, still dreading that he would change his mind.
They walked along in silence, Rakitin was positively afraid to talk.
“And how glad she will be, how delighted!” he muttered, but lapsed into silence again. And indeed it was not to please Grushenka he was taking Alyosha to her. He was a practical person and never undertook anything without a prospect of gain for himself. His object in this case was twofold, first a revengeful desire to see “the downfall of the righteous,” and Alyosha’s fall “from the saints to the sinners,” over which he was already gloating in his imagination, and in the second place he had in view a certain material gain for himself, of which more will be said later.