expression. He leapt pulsively to his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an irresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she flew impetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keeping his hands pressed them violently. Several times they both strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speechless with a strange smile, their eyes fastened on one another. So passed two minutes.
'Have you forgiven me?' Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment turning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, 'Do you hear what I am asking, do you hear?'
'That's what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!' broke from Katya. 'My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you forgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in yours--so it must be....' She stopped to take breath. 'What have I come for?' she began again with nervous haste: 'to embrace your feet, to press your hands like this, till it hurts- you remember how in Moscow I used to squeeze them--to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,' she moaned in anguish, and suddenly pressed his hand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he was seeing.
'Love is over, Mitya!' Katya began again, 'But the past is painfully dear to me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might have been come true for one minute,' she faltered, with a drawn smile, looking into his face joyfully again. 'You love another woman, and I love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love me; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!' she cried, with a quiver almost of menace in her voice.
'I shall love you, and... do you know, Katya,' Mitya began, drawing a deep breath at each word, 'do you know, five days ago, that same evening, I loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out... All my life! So it will be, so it will always be-'
So they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless, perhaps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed what they said implicitly.
'Katya,' cried Mitya suddenly, 'do you believe I murdered him? I know you don't believe it now, but then... when you gave evidence.... Surely, surely you did not believe it!'
'I did not believe it even then. I've never believed it. I hated you, and for a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I persuaded myself and believed it, but when I'd finished speaking I left off believing it at once. Don't doubt that! I have forgotten that I came here to punish myself,' she said, with a new expression in her voice, quite unlike the loving tones of a moment before.
'Woman, yours is a heavy burden,' broke, as it were, involuntarily from Mitya.
'Let me go,' she whispered. 'I'll come again. It's more than I can bear now.'
She was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream and staggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the room. No one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but when she reached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as chalk and moaned softly, almost in a whisper:
'Forgive me!'
Grushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive, venomous voice, answered:
'We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred! As though we could forgive one another! Save him, and I'll worship you all my life.'
'You won't forgive her!' cried Mitya, with frantic reproach.
'Don't be anxious, I'll save him for you!' Katya whispered rapidly, and she ran out of the room.
'And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness herself?’ Mitya exclaimed bitterly again.
'Mitya, don't dare to blame her; you have no right to!' Alyosha cried hotly.
'Her proud lips spoke, not her heart,' Grushenka brought out in a tone of disgust. 'If she saves you I'll forgive her everything-'
She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not yet recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards, accidentally, with no suspicion of what she would meet.
'Alyosha, run after her!' Mitya cried to his brother; 'tell her... I don't know... don't let her go away like this!'
'I'll come to you again at nightfall,' said Alyosha, and he ran after Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She walking fast, but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly:
'No, before that woman I can't punish myself! I asked her forgiveness because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not forgive me.... I like her for that!' she added, in an unnatural voice, and her eyes flashed with fierce resentment.
'My brother did not expect this in the least,' muttered Alyosha. 'He was sure she would not come-'
'No doubt. Let us leave that,' she snapped. 'Listen: I can't go with you to the funeral now. I've sent them flowers. I think they still have money. If necessary, tell them I'll never abandon them.... Now leave me, leave me, please. You are late as it is--the bells are ringing for the service.... Leave me, please!'
Chapter 3
Ilusha's Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
HE really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him. It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilusha's schoolfellows. They had all been impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve of them, they all had their school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. 'Father will cry, be with father,' Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them.
'How glad I am you've come, Karamazov!' he cried, holding out his hand to Alyosha. 'It's awful here. It's really horrible to see it. Snegiryov is not drunk, we know for a fact he's had nothing to drink to-day, but he seems as if he were drunk... I am always manly, but this is awful. Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?'
'What is it, Kolya?' said Alyosha.
'Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or was it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven't slept for the last four nights for thinking of it.'
'The valet killed him, my brother is innocent,' answered Alyosha.
'That's what I said,' cried Smurov.
'So he will perish an innocent victim!' exclaimed Kolya; 'though he is ruined he is happy! I could envy him!'
'What do you mean? How can you? Why?' cried Alyosha surprised.
'Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!' said Kolya with enthusiasm.
'But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horrer!' said Alyosha.
'Of course... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for disgrace, I don't care about that--our names may perish. I respect your brother!'
'And so do I!' the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had founded Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his ears like a peony as he had done on that occasion.
Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked particularly beautiful, as though chiselled in marble. There were flowers in his hands and the coffin, with flowers, which had been sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and he would not look at anyone, even at his crazy weeping wife, 'mamma,' who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it and she too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov's face looked eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about his gestures and the words that broke from him. 'Old man, dear old man!' he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to call Ilusha 'old man,' as a term of affection when he was
