that I should bring it to him again to-morrow, and yet
he is in terrible need of that money. Though he is proud of himself now,
yet even to-day he'll be thinking what a help he has lost. He will think
of it more than ever at night, will dream of it, and by to-morrow morning
he may be ready to run to me to ask forgiveness. It's just then that I'll
appear. 'Here, you are a proud man,' I shall say: 'you have shown it; but
now take the money and forgive us!' And then he will take it!"

Alyosha was carried away with joy as he uttered his last words, "And then
he will take it!" Lise clapped her hands.

"Ah, that's true! I understand that perfectly now. Ah, Alyosha, how do you
know all this? So young and yet he knows what's in the heart.... I should
never have worked it out."

"The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing
with us, in spite of his taking money from us," Alyosha went on in his
excitement, "and not only on an equal, but even on a higher footing."

" 'On a higher footing' is charming, Alexey Fyodorovitch; but go on, go
on!"

"You mean there isn't such an expression as 'on a higher footing'; but
that doesn't matter because--"

"Oh, no, of course it doesn't matter. Forgive me, Alyosha, dear.... You
know, I scarcely respected you till now--that is I respected you but on an
equal footing; but now I shall begin to respect you on a higher footing.
Don't be angry, dear, at my joking," she put in at once, with strong
feeling. "I am absurd and small, but you, you! Listen, Alexey
Fyodorovitch. Isn't there in all our analysis--I mean your analysis ... no,
better call it ours--aren't we showing contempt for him, for that poor
man--in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In
deciding so certainly that he will take the money?"

"No, Lise, it's not contempt," Alyosha answered, as though he had prepared
himself for the question. "I was thinking of that on the way here. How can
it be contempt when we are all like him, when we are all just the same as
he is? For you know we are just the same, no better. If we are better, we
should have been just the same in his place.... I don't know about you,
Lise, but I consider that I have a sordid soul in many ways, and his soul
is not sordid; on the contrary, full of fine feeling.... No, Lise, I have
no contempt for him. Do you know, Lise, my elder told me once to care for
most people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as