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cross he has to bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodo-
rovitch told me a great deal about it, and if you knew how
he talked! Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could not
repress, ‘If you knew how he loved that wretched man at
the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps,
at the same moment. And I heard his story and his tears
with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am re-
sponsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable
of suffering,’ Katya concluded irritably. ‘Can such a man
suffer? Men like him never suffer!’ There was a note of ha-
tred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And yet it
was she who had betrayed him. ‘Perhaps because she feels
how she’s wronged him she hates him at moments,’ Alyosha
thought to himself. He hoped that it was only ‘at moments.’
In Katya’s last words he detected a challenging note, but he
did not take it up.
‘I sent for you this morning to make you promise to per-
suade him yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape
would be dishonourable, cowardly, or something... unchris-
tian, perhaps?’ Katya added, even more defiantly.
‘Oh, no. I’ll tell him everything,’ muttered Alyosha. ‘He
asks you to come and see him to-day,’ he blurted out sud-
denly, looking her steadily in the face. She started, and drew
back a little from him on the sofa.
‘Me? Can that be?’ She faltered, turning pale.
‘It can and ought to be!’ Alyosha began emphatically,
growing more animated. ‘He needs you particularly just
now. I would not have opened the subject and worried you,
if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside himself, he

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