Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1‘You... you... you are a little religious idiot — that’s what
you are!’ Katerina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white
and her lips were moving with anger.
Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his
hand.
‘You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,’ he said, with an
expression Alyosha had never seen in his face before — an
expression of youthful sincerity and strong, irresistibly
frank feeling. ‘Katerina Ivanovna has never cared for me!
She has known all the time that I cared for her — though
I never said a word of my love to her — she knew, but she
didn’t care for me. I have never been her friend either, not
for one moment; she is too proud to need my friendship.
She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged
with me and on me all the insults which she has been con-
tinually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting.
For even that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an in-
sult — that’s what her heart is like! She has talked to me of
nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but, believe
me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more
he insults you, the more you love him — that’s your ‘lacera-
tion.’ You love him just as he is; you love him for insulting
you. If he reformed, you’d give him up at once and cease to
love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continu-
ally your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity.
And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there’s a great deal
of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes
from pride.... I am too young and I’ve loved you too much.
I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more