“And she is not guilty⁠—oh God!⁠—Every moment she bemoans and bewails herself, and cries out that she does not admit any guilt, that she is the victim of circumstances⁠—the victim of a wicked libertine.

“But whatever she may say, remember that she does not believe it herself⁠—remember that she will believe nothing but that she is a guilty creature.

“When I tried to rid her soul of this gloomy fallacy, she suffered so terribly that my heart will never be quite at peace so long as I can remember that dreadful time!⁠—Do you know why she left me? Simply to prove to me what is not true⁠—that she is base. But the worst of it is, she did not realize herself that that was all she wanted to prove by her departure! She went away in response to some inner prompting to do something disgraceful, in order that she might say to herself⁠—‘There⁠—you’ve done a new act of shame⁠—you degraded creature!’

“Oh, Aglaya⁠—perhaps you cannot understand all this. Try to realize that in the perpetual admission of guilt she probably finds some dreadful unnatural satisfaction⁠—as though she were revenging herself upon someone.