1 The Brothers Karamazovdignified on my part simply to leave you, and it would be
less offensive for you. But I am going far away, and shall
never come back.... It is for ever. I don’t want to sit beside
a ‘laceration.’... But I don’t know how to speak now. I’ve
said everything.... Good-bye, Katerina Ivanovna; you can’t
be angry with me, for I am a hundred times more severely
punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see
you again. Good-bye! I don’t want your hand. You have tor-
tured me too deliberately for me to be able to forgive you at
this moment. I shall forgive you later, but now I don’t want
your hand. Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,’* he added,
with a forced smile, showing, however, that he could read
Schiller, and read him till he knew him by heart — which
Alyosha would never have believed. He went out of the
room without saying good-bye even to his hostess, Madame
Hohlakov. Alyosha clasped his hands.
- Thank you, madam, I want nothing.
‘Ivan!’ he cried desperately after him. ‘Come back, Ivan!
No, nothing will induce him to come back now!’ he cried
again, regretfully realising it; ‘but it’s my fault, my fault. I
began it! Ivan spoke angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily.
He must come back here, come back,’ Alyosha kept exclaim-
ing frantically.
Katerina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room.
‘You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like
an angel,’ Madame Hohlakov whispered rapidly and ec-
statically to Alyosha. ‘I will do my utmost to prevent Ivan
Fyodorovitch from going.’
Her face beamed with delight, to the great distress of