Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1
next day, possibly even that evening. Moreover, he was fully
persuaded that his father might hurt anyone else, but would
not hurt him. Alyosha was certain that no one in the whole
world ever would want to hurt him, and, what is more, he
knew that no one could hurt him. This was for him an axi-
om, assumed once for all without question, and he went his
way without hesitation, relying on it.
But at that moment an anxiety of sort disturbed him, and
worried him the more because he could not formulate it. It
was the fear of a woman, of Katerina Ivanovna, who had so
urgently entreated him in the note handed to him by Ma-
dame Hohlakov to come and see her about something. This
request and the necessity of going had at once aroused an
uneasy feeling in his heart, and this feeling had grown more
and more painful all the morning in spite of the scenes at
the hermitage and at the Father Superior’s. He was not un-
easy because he did not know what she would speak of and
what he must answer. And he was not afraid of her simply
as a woman. Though he knew little of women, he spent his
life, from early childhood till he entered the monastery, en-
tirely with women. He was afraid of that woman, Katerina
Ivanovna. He had been afraid of her from the first time he
saw her. He had only seen her two or three times, and had
only chanced to say a few words to her. He thought of her
as a beautiful, proud, imperious girl. It was not her beauty
which troubled him, but something else. And the vagueness
of his apprehension increased the apprehension itself. The
girl’s aims were of the noblest, he knew that. She was try-
ing to save his brother Dmitri simply through generosity,