I knew he would ask me to
come. It's impossible!"

"Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first
time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never
grasped it before so fully. He said, 'If she refuses to come I shall be
unhappy all my life.' Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal
servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy--is not that
piteous? Think--you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is innocent,"
broke like a challenge from Alyosha. "His hands are clean, there is no
blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in the future visit
him now. Go, greet him on his way into the darkness--stand at his door,
that is all.... You ought to do it, you ought to!" Alyosha concluded,
laying immense stress on the word "ought."

"I ought to ... but I cannot...." Katya moaned. "He will look at me.... I
can't."

"Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don't
make up your mind to do it now?"

"Better suffer all my life."

"You ought to go, you ought to go," Alyosha repeated with merciless
emphasis.

"But why to-day, why at once?... I can't leave our patient--"

"You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don't come, he
will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on
him!"

"Have pity on _me!_" Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst into
tears.

"Then you will come," said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. "I'll go and
tell him you will come directly."

"No, don't tell him so on any account," cried Katya in alarm. "I will
come, but don't tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go
in.... I don't know yet--"

Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.

"And what if I meet any one?" she said suddenly, in a low voice, turning
white again.

"That's just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will be
no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you," he
concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.

Chapter II. For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth

He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his
fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent
to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several
persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put
Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate little