Alyosha leaves his father's house more exhausted than when he entered. He is afraid to fit the day's pieces together. The three thousand is settled, and Dmitri, feeling dishonoured, may sink to any depth. He has also told Alyosha to describe the scene with their father. By seven it is getting dark. Alyosha enters the spacious house on the High Street, where Katerina lives with two aunts who give way to her in everything.
She is in a great excitement, almost ecstasy. She wants his last impression, told coarsely if need be, and every word of the message. He repeats it: compliments, and that Dmitri will never come again. Dmitri begged him two or three times not to forget the word. She flushes. If the compliments had been sent in passing, without that insistence, the hope would be thinner. She builds on the insistence, and for a moment Alyosha believes her. Then she calls. A soft voice answers that she has only been waiting behind the curtain.
Grushenka comes out smiling, her feet making no sound. Katerina kisses the rather fat hand three times and talks of another man who is offering his hand. Grushenka says she has a bad heart and will have her own way. She fascinated Dmitri for fun, for almost a whole hour, and she gave no promise. She may go home, feel sorry for him, and tell him to stay. Katerina turns pale. She had heard something quite different.
Grushenka then names the visits in the dusk, when beauty was brought for money. Katerina screams that she is a creature for sale and a tigress, and that she ought to be flogged on a scaffold. Alyosha holds her back. The aunts run in. Grushenka takes her mantle, asks Alyosha to see her home, and says she got up the scene for his benefit. She runs out laughing. Katerina begs him to come tomorrow and not condemn her. He walks into the street reeling. The maid overtakes him with a little pink envelope from Madame Hohlakov, left since dinner, and he puts it in his pocket.
Coming Up in Chapter 24
It is almost night on the deserted road to the monastery. At the cross-roads a figure rushes out from under a solitary willow, shouting "Your money or your life!" It is Dmitri. He had been waiting, because this is the only road to the monastery. He tells Alyosha to crush him like a beetle and say what she said.
