"I had not forgotten that," cried Katerina Ivanovna, coming to a sudden standstill, "and why are you so antagonistic at such a moment?" she added, with warm and bitter reproachfulness. "What I said, I repeat. I must have his opinion. More than that, I must have his decision! As he says, so it shall be. You see how anxious I am for your words, Alexey Fyodorovitch… But what’s the matter?"
"I couldn’t have believed it. I can’t understand it!" Alyosha cried suddenly in distress.
"What? What?"
"He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but sorry to be—losing a friend. But that was acting, too—you were playing a part—as in a theater!"
"In a theater? What? What do you mean?" exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna, profoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning.
"Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist in telling him to his face that it’s fortunate he is going," said Alyosha breathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit down.
"What are you talking about? I don’t understand."
"I don’t understand myself… I seemed to see in a flash… I know I am not saying it properly, but I’ll say it all the same," Alyosha went on in the same shaking and broken voice. "What I see is that perhaps you don’t love Dmitri at all… and never have, from the beginning… And Dmitri, too, has never loved you… and only esteems you… I really don’t know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth… for nobody here will tell 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.
