1 The Brothers Karamazovkeeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled with you that
he wants you, but only that you would go and show yourself
at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He
realises that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He
does not ask your forgiveness — ‘It’s impossible to forgive
me,’ he says himself- but only that you would show yourself
in his doorway.’
‘It’s so sudden...’ faltered Katya. ‘I’ve had a presentiment
all these days that you would come with that message. I
knew he would ask me to come. It’s impossible!’
‘Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realises
for the first time how he has wounded you, the first time
in his life; he had never grasped it before so fully. He said,
‘If she refuses to come I shall be unhappy all my life.’ you
hear? though he is condemned to penal servitude for twenty
years, he is still planning to be happy- is not that piteous?
Think — you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is in-
nocent,’ broke like a challenge from Alyosha. ‘His hands are
clean, there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite
sufferings in the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his
way into the darkness — stand at his door, that is all.... You
ought to do it, you ought to!’ Alyosha concluded, laying im-
mense stress on the word ‘ought.’
‘I ought to... but I cannot...’ Katya moaned. ‘He will look
at me.... I can’t.’
‘Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life,
if you don’t make up your mind to do it now?’
‘Better suffer all my life.’
‘You ought to go, you ought to go,’ Alyosha repeated with