And she actually put the cord round his neck, and began arranging it. In extreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped her, and at last he got it under his necktie and collar through his shirt to his chest.
“Now you can set off,” Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down triumphantly in her place again.
“Madam, I am so touched. I don’t know how to thank you, indeed … for such kindness, but … If only you knew how precious time is to me. … That sum of money, for which I shall be indebted to your generosity. … Oh, madam, since you are so kind, so touchingly generous to me,” Mitya exclaimed impulsively, “then let me reveal to you … though, of course, you’ve known it a long time … that I love somebody here. … I have been false to Katya … Katerina Ivanovna I should say. … Oh, I’ve behaved inhumanly, dishonorably to her, but I fell in love here with another woman … a woman whom you, madam, perhaps, despise, for you know everything already, but whom I cannot leave on any account, and therefore that three thousand now—”
“Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Madame Hohlakov interrupted in the most decisive tone. “Leave everything, especially women. Goldmines are your goal, and there’s no place for women there. Afterwards, when you come back rich and famous, you will find the girl of your heart in the highest society. That will be a modern girl, a girl of education and advanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman question will have gained ground, and the new woman will have appeared.”
“Madam, that’s not the point, not at all. …” Mitya clasped his hands in entreaty.
“Yes, it is, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, just what you need; the very thing you’re yearning for, though you don’t realize it yourself. I am not at all opposed to the present woman movement, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The