"Of course he did not tell you.It was about that plan of escape.He had told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarrelling about it at once and quarrelled for three days.We quarrelled because, when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at once- I can't tell you why, I don't know myself why....Oh, of course, I was furious then about that creature, and that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips quivering with anger."As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous of Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri.That is how our first quarrel began.I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness.Icould not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving that...and when I myself had told him long before that I did not love Dmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that creature that made me angry with him.Three days later, on the evening you came, he brought me a sealed envelope, which Iwas to open at once, if anything happened to him.Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or was taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone.Then he left me money, nearly ten thousand- those notes to which the prosecutor referred in his speech, having learnt from someone that he had sent them to be changed.I was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to me, though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved Mitya.Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the greatness of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch.I wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he would take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya's being saved (and he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated at the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I lost my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury again! Oh, I am unhappy! It's my character, my awful, unhappy character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri.
But...no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself.And when you came in then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, Iwas so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that do you remember?- I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that malicious thing on purpose to wound him again.He had never, never persuaded me that his brother was a murderer.On the contrary, it was I who persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved the way to that hideous scene at the trial.He wanted to show me that he was an honourable man, and that, even if Iloved his brother, he would not ruin him for revenge or jealousy.So he came to the court...I am the cause of it all, I alone am to blame!"Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by grief.Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery, though she had carefully concealed it from him during those days since the trial; but it would have been, for some reason, too painful to him if she had been brought so low as to speak to him now about that.She was suffering for her "treachery"at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries and hysterical writhings on the floor.But he dreaded that moment and longed to spare her.It made the commission on which he had come even more difficult.He spoke of Mitya again.
"It's all right, it's all right, don't be anxious about him! she began again, sharply and stubbornly."All that is only momentary, Iknow him, I know his heart only too well.You may be sure he will consent to escape.It's not as though it would be immediately; he will have time to make up his mind to it.Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with it.Don't be anxious; he will consent to run away.He has agreed already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And they won't let her go to him, so he is bound to escape.It's you he's most afraid of, he is afraid you won't approve of his escape on moral grounds.But you must generously allow it, if your sanction is so necessary," Katya added viciously.She paused and smiled.
"He talks about some hymn," she went on again, "some cross he has to bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal about it, and if you knew how he talked! Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could not repress, "If you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment.And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain.Brute! Yes, I am a brute.I am responsible for his fever.But that man in prison is incapable of suffering,"Katya concluded irritably."Can such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!" There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words.And yet it was she who had betrayed him."Perhaps because she feels how she's wronged him she hates him at moments,"Alyosha thought to himself.He hoped that it was only "at moments." In Katya's last words he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up.
"I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself.Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonourable, cowardly, or something...unchristian, perhaps?"Katya added, even more defiantly.
