She was good … she used to come … not often … she couldn’t. … We used to read together and … talk. She will see God.”
The last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was something new again: the mysterious meetings with Lizaveta and both of them—religious maniacs.
“I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It’s infectious!”
“Read!” he cried irritably and insistently.
Sonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the “unhappy lunatic.”
“What for? You don’t believe? …” she whispered softly and as it were breathlessly.
“Read! I want you to,” he persisted. “You used to read to Lizaveta.”
Sonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking, her voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out the first syllable.
“Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany …” she forced herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice broke like an overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.
Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all that was her own . He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure , which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by