Page 640 - the-idiot

A shudder seemed to sweep over his whole body at the
recollection.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Aglaya.
‘There is nothing which you might not hear. Why I
should wish to tell you, and only you, this experience of
mine, I really cannot say; perhaps it really is because I love
you very much. This unhappy woman is persuaded that she
is the most hopeless, fallen creature in the world. Oh, do not
condemn her! Do not cast stones at her! She has suffered too
much already in the consciousness of her own undeserved
shame.
‘And she is not guilty—oh God!—Every moment she be-
moans and bewails herself, and cries out that she does not
admit any guilt, that she is the victim of circumstances—
the victim of a wicked libertine.
‘But whatever she may say, remember that she does not
believe it herself,—remember that she will believe nothing
but that she is a guilty creature.
‘When I tried to rid her soul of this gloomy fallacy, she
suffered so terribly that my heart will never be quite at
peace so long as I can remember that dreadful time!—Do
you know why she left me? Simply to prove to me what is
not true—that she is base. But the worst of it is, she did
not realize herself that that was all she wanted to prove
by her departure! She went away in response to some in-
ner prompting to do something disgraceful, in order that
she might say to herself—‘There—you’ve done a new act of
shame—you degraded creature!’
‘Oh, Aglaya—perhaps you cannot understand all this.