prison is incapable of suffering,” Katya concluded irritably. “Can such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!”
There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And yet it was she who had betrayed him. “Perhaps because she feels how she’s wronged him she hates him at moments,” Alyosha thought to himself. He hoped that it was only “at moments.” In Katya’s last words he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up.
“I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonorable, cowardly, or something … unchristian, perhaps?” Katya added, even more defiantly.
“Oh, no. I’ll tell him everything,” muttered Alyosha. “He asks you to come and see him today,” he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.
“Me? Can that be?” she faltered, turning pale.
“It can and ought to be!” Alyosha began emphatically, growing more animated. “He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside himself, he keeps 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 realizes 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!”