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else. With a sinking heart he was expecting every moment
Grushenka’s decision, always believing that it would come
suddenly, on the impulse of the moment. All of a sudden
she would say to him: ‘Take me, I’m yours for ever,’ and it
would all be over. He would seize her and bear her away at
once to the ends of the earth. Oh, then he would bear her
away at once, as far, far away as possible; to the farthest end
of Russia, if not of the earth, then he would marry her, and
settle down with her incognito, so that no one would know
anything about them, there, here, or anywhere. Then, oh
then, a new life would begin at once!
Of this different, reformed and ‘virtuous’ life (“it must, it
must be virtuous’) he dreamed feverishly at every moment.
He thirsted for that reformation and renewal. The filthy
morass, in which he had sunk of his own free will, was too
revolting to him, and, like very many men in such cases, he
put faith above all in change of place. If only it were not for
these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if
only he could fly away from this accursed place- he would
be altogether regenerated, would enter on a new path. That
was what he believed in, and what he was yearning for.
But all this could only be on condition of the first, the
happy solution of the question. There was another possibil-
ity, a different and awful ending. Suddenly she might say to
him: ‘Go away. I have just come to terms with Fyodor Pav-
lovitch. I am going to marry him and don’t want you’ — and
then... but then... But Mitya did not know what would hap-
pen then. Up to the last hour he didn’t know. That must
be said to his credit. He had no definite intentions, had

10 The Brothers Karamazov