'The Heart of Each Held Infinite Sources of Life for the Heart of the Other'

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I've just finished reading one of Fyodr Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime and Punishment (see Wikipedia for a summary). This book illustrates the importance of unconditional love and the requirement to suffer for our crimes to satisfy the demands of justice. The novel is the product of a beautiful mind — one that spent years in exile in Siberia, where he was permitted to read nothing but the New Testament. (Just imagine what our modern world would be like if more people read just the New Testament!)

I was particularly struck by lines near the end of the book that describe the love between Raskolnikov (the book's protagonist) and Sonya (the daughter of a local drunk).  Sonya is often characterized as self-sacrificial, shy and even innocent despite the fact that she is compelled into prostitution to help her family. Sonya supports Raskolnikov — even traveling to his prison camp in Siberia to be near him — although she was friends with one of the two women he killed. Throughout the novel, Sonya is an important source of moral strength and rehabilitation for Raskolnikov (lesson: judge not).

On the book's penultimate page, Sonya visits Raskolinkov in prison (one of many such visits). She is recovering from an illness, and Raskolnikov is in the midst of the first of eight years of tough penal servitude for his double murder. Dostoevsky writes:

She knew he had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come ... They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.  

They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his being, while she—she only lived in his life (p. 429, emphasis added).

The bolded phrases are exquisite. To love someone in spite of such horrid crimes is almost unfathomable, but such is the love of Christ. In my wonderful marriage, my beloved wife holds "infinite sources of life" for my heart. And, as is so often the case with women, she perpetually lives outside herself — a Christian act that eternally blesses me and our children.