"Me!"

"You. She fell in love with you then, ever since that time, that birthday party. Only she thinks it's impossible for her to marry you, because she'd supposedly disgrace you and ruin your whole life. 'I'm you-know-what,' she says. To this day she maintains it

herself. She says it all right in my face. She's afraid to ruin and disgrace you, but me she can marry, meaning it doesn't matter— that's how she considers me, note that as well!"

"But why, then, did she run away from you to me, and . . . from me . . .

"And from you to me! Heh! All sorts of things suddenly come into her head! She's all like in a fever now. One day she shouts to me: 'I'll marry you like drowning myself. Be quick with the wedding!' She hurries herself, fixes the date, and when the time is near—she gets frightened, or has other ideas—God knows, but you've seen her: she cries, laughs, thrashes around feverishly. What's so strange that she ran away from you, too? She ran away from you then, because she suddenly realized how much she loves you. It was beyond her to be with you. You just said I sought her out then in Moscow; that's not so—she came running to me herself: 'Fix the day,' she says, 'I'm ready! Pour the champagne! We'll go to the gypsies!' she shouts! ... If it wasn't for me, she'd have drowned herself long ago; it's right what I'm saying. The reason she doesn't do it is maybe because I'm even scarier than the water. So she wants to marry me out of spite ... If she does it, believe me, she'll be doing it out of spite."

"But how can you . . . how can you! . . ." the prince cried and did not finish. He looked at Rogozhin with horror.

"Why don't you finish?" the other added with a grin. "But if you like, I'll tell you how you're reasoning at this very moment: 'So how can she be with him now? How can she be allowed to do it?' I know what you think . . ."

"I didn't come for that, Parfyon, I'm telling you, that's not what I had in mind . . ."

"Maybe it wasn't for that and that wasn't on your mind, only now it's certainly become that, heh, heh! Well, enough! Why are you all overturned like that? You mean you really didn't know? You amaze me!"

"This is all jealousy, Parfyon, it's all illness, you exaggerate it beyond all measure . . ." the prince murmured in great agitation. "What's the matter?"

"Let it alone," Parfyon said and quickly snatched from the prince's hand the little knife he had picked up from the table, next to the book, and put it back where it had been.

"It's as if I knew, when I was coming to Petersburg, as if I had a foreboding . . ." the prince went on. "I didn't want to come here!

I wanted to forget everything here, to tear it out of my heart! Well, good-bye . . . But what's the matter?"

As he was talking, the prince had again absentmindedly picked up the same knife from the table, and again Rogozhin had taken it from him and dropped it on the table. It was a knife of a rather simple form, with a staghorn handle, not a folding one, with a blade six inches long and of a corresponding width.

Seeing that the prince paid particular attention to the fact that this knife had twice been snatched away from him, Rogozhin seized it in angry vexation, put it in the book, and flung the book onto the other table.

"Do you cut the pages with it?" asked the prince, but somehow absentmindedly, still as if under the pressure of a deep pensiveness.

"Yes, the pages . . ."

"Isn't it a garden knife?"

"Yes, it is. Can't you cut pages with a garden knife?"

"But it's . . . brand-new."

"Well, what if it is new? So now I can't buy a new knife?" Rogozhin, who was getting more and more vexed with every word, finally cried out in a sort of frenzy.

The prince gave a start and gazed intently at Rogozhin.

"Look at us!" he suddenly laughed, recovering himself completely. "Forgive me, brother, when my head's as heavy as it is now, and this illness . . . I've become quite absentminded and ridiculous. This is not at all what I wanted to ask about ... I don't remember what it was. Good-bye . . ."

"Not that way," said Rogozhin.

"I forget!"

"This way, this way, come on, I'll show you."

IV

They went through the same rooms the prince had already passed through; Rogozhin walked a little ahead, the prince followed. They came to a big reception room. Here there were several paintings on the walls, all portraits of bishops or landscapes in which nothing could be made out. Over the door to the next room hung a painting rather strange in form, around six feet wide and no more than ten inches high. It portrayed the Savior just taken down from the cross. The prince glanced fleetingly at it, as

if recalling something, not stopping, however, wanting to go on through the door. He felt very oppressed and wanted to be out of this house quickly. But Rogozhin suddenly stopped in front of the painting.

"All these paintings here," he said, "my deceased father bought at auctions for a rouble or two. He liked that. One man who's a connoisseur looked at them all: trash, he said, but that one—the painting over the door, also bought for two roubles—he said, isn't trash. In my father's time somebody showed up offering three hundred and fifty roubles for it, and Savelyev, Ivan Dmitrich, a merchant, a great amateur, went up to four hundred, and last week he offered my brother Semyon Semyonych as much as five hundred. I kept it for myself."

"Yes, it's . . . it's a copy from Hans Holbein," said the prince, having managed to take a look at the painting, "and, though I'm no great expert, it seems to be an excellent copy. I saw the painting abroad and cannot forget it.¹⁹ But . . . what's the matter . . ."

Rogozhin suddenly abandoned the painting and went further on his way. Of course, absentmindedness and the special, strangely irritated mood that had appeared so unexpectedly in Rogozhin might have explained this abruptness; but even so the prince thought it somehow odd that a conversation not initiated by him should be so suddenly broken off, and that Rogozhin did not even answer him.

"But I've long wanted to ask you something, Lev Nikolaich: do you believe in God or not?" Rogozhin suddenly began speaking again, after going several steps.

"How strangely you ask and . . . stare!" the prince observed involuntarily.

"But I like looking at that painting," Rogozhin muttered after a silence, as if again forgetting his question.

"At that painting!" the prince suddenly cried out, under the impression of an unexpected thought. "At that painting! A man could even lose his faith from that painting!"

"Lose it he does," Rogozhin suddenly agreed unexpectedly. They had already reached the front door.

"What?" the prince suddenly stopped. "How can you! I was almost joking, and you're so serious! And why did you ask me whether I believe in God?"

"Never mind, I just did. I wanted to ask you before. Many people don't believe nowadays. And is it true (because you've lived abroad)

what one drunk man told me, that in our Russia, people don't believe in God even more than in other countries? 'It's easier for us than for them,' he said, 'because we've gone further than they have . . .' "

Rogozhin smiled sarcastically; having uttered his question, he suddenly opened the door and, keeping hold of the handle, waited for the prince to go out. The prince was surprised, but went out. Rogozhin followed him out to the landing and closed the door behind him. The two men stood facing each other, looking as if they had forgotten where they had come to and what they were to do next.