“Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning,” Mitya hastened to explain again; “I asked her to do something for me. You know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will recover.”

“Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely doubts of his recovery,” said Alyosha.

“That means that she is convinced he will die. It’s because she is frightened she’s so sure he will get well.”

“Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there’s every hope that he will get well,” Alyosha observed anxiously.

“Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has a great deal of sorrow to bear …” A silence followed. A grave anxiety was fretting Mitya.

“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a shaking voice, full of tears.

“They won’t let her go out there to you,” Alyosha put in at once.

“And there is something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya went on, with a sudden ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I won’t submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is. I’ve been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’; but if a guard speaks to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha I would bear anything … anything except blows. … But she won’t be allowed to come there.”

Alyosha smiled gently.

“Listen, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’ The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if you want them so much. If other men would have to answer for your escape, officers or soldiers, then I would not have ‘allowed’ you,” smiled Alyosha. “But they declare—the superintendent of that étape told Ivan himself—that if it’s well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that they can get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a case, but I can’t undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I must tell you the truth. And so I can’t judge of your own action. But let me assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a strange thing if I could judge you in this. Now I think I’ve gone into everything.”

“But I do condemn myself!” cried Mitya. “I shall escape, that was settled apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away? But I shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That’s how the Jesuits talk, isn’t it? Just as we are doing?”

“Yes,” Alyosha smiled gently.

“I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding anything,” cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. “So I’ve caught my Alyosha being Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest; I’ll open the