Page 239 - the-brothers-karamazov

Chapter 10

Both Together

LYOSHA left his father’s house feeling even more ex-
Ahausted and dejected in spirit than when he had entered
it. His mind too seemed shattered and unhinged, while he
felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed frag-
ments and form a general idea from all the agonising and
conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bor-
dering upon despair, which he had never known till then.
Towering like a mountain above all the rest stood the fatal,
insoluble question: How would things end between his fa-
ther and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now
he had himself been a witness of it, he had been present and
seen them face to face. Yet only his brother Dmitri could
be made unhappy, terribly, completely unhappy: there was
trouble awaiting him. It appeared too that there were oth-
er people concerned, far more so than Alyosha could have
supposed before. There was something positively mysteri-
ous in it, too. Ivan had made a step towards him, which was
what Alyosha had been long desiring. Yet now he felt for
some reason that he was frightened at it. And these wom-
en? Strange to say, that morning he had set out for Katerina

The Brothers Karamazov