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116 The Gospel in Dostoyevsky“Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany…”she forced herself at last to read, but at the third word her voicebroke like an overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herselfto read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughlyand irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood onlytoo well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all thatwas her own. He understood that these feelings really were hersecret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhapsfrom childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and adistracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of starvingchildren and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the sametime he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filledher with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desireto read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to readnow – whatever might come of it!…He read this in her eyes, hecould see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlledthe spasm in her throat, and went on reading the eleventhchapter of St. John and came to the nineteenth verse:“And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfortthem concerning their brother.”“Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming,went and met him; but Mary sat still in the house.“Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here,my brother had not died.“But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God,God will give it thee…”Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that hervoice would quiver and break again.“Jesus said unto her, thy brother shall rise again.