“Oh, no, angel lady, I’ve promised nothing,” Grushenka interrupted softly and evenly, still with the same gay and simple expression. “You see at once, dear young lady, what a willful wretch I am compared with you. If I want to do a thing I do it. I may have made you some promise just now. But now again I’m thinking: I may take to Mitya again. I liked him very much once—liked him for almost a whole hour. Now maybe I shall go and tell him to stay with me from this day forward. You see, I’m so changeable.” “Just now you said—something quite different,” Katerina Ivanovna whispered faintly. “Ah, just now! But, you know. I’m such a soft-hearted, silly creature. Only think what he’s gone through on my account! What if when I go home I feel sorry for him? What then?” “I never expected—” “Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared with me! Now perhaps you won’t care for a silly creature like me, now you know my character. Give me your sweet little hand, angelic lady,” she said tenderly, and with a sort of reverence took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand. “Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your hand and kiss it as you did mine. You kissed mine three times, but I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even with you. Well, but let that pass. And then it shall be as God wills. Perhaps I shall be your slave entirely and want to do your bidding like a slave. Let it be as God wills, without any agreements and promises. What a sweet hand—what a sweet hand you have! You sweet young lady, you incredible beauty!” She slowly raised the hands to her lips, with the strange object indeed of “being even” with her in kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not take her hand away. She listened with timid hope to the last words, though Grushenka’s promise to do her bidding like a slave was very strangely expressed. She looked intently into her eyes; she still saw in those eyes the same simple-hearted, confiding expression, the same bright gayety. “She’s perhaps too naïve,” thought Katerina Ivanovna, with a gleam of hope. Grushenka meanwhile seemed enthusiastic over the “sweet hand.” She raised it deliberately to her lips. But she held it for two or three minutes near her lips, as though reconsidering something. “Do you know, angel lady,” she suddenly drawled in an even more soft and sugary voice, “do you know, after all, I think I won’t kiss your hand?” And she laughed a little merry laugh. “As you please. What’s the matter with you?” said Katerina Ivanovna, starting suddenly. “So that you may be left to remember that you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss yours.” There was a sudden gleam in her eyes. She looked with awful intentness at Katerina Ivanovna. “Insolent creature!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, as though suddenly grasping something. She flushed all over and leapt up from her seat. Grushenka too got up, but without haste. “So I shall tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss yours at all. And how he will laugh!” “Vile slut! Go away!”