Shatov, totally astounded, listened and said nothing.

"I guessed, but didn't believe it," he finally muttered, looking strangely at Stavrogin.

"And you hit me?"

Shatov blushed and began to mutter almost incoherently:

"For your fall... for the lie. I didn't go up to you in order to punish you; as I was going I didn't know I would hit you ... It was for your having meant so much in my life... I..."

"I understand, I understand, save your words. It's too bad you're in a fever; I've come with the most necessary business."

"I've been waiting too long for you," Shatov somehow nearly shook all over and rose slightly from his seat. "Tell me your business, I'll tell you, too... afterwards..."

He sat down.

"The business isn't of that kind," Nikolai Vsevolodovich began, studying him with curiosity. "Owing to certain circumstances, I was obliged to choose this hour, today, to come and warn you that it's possible you will be killed."

Shatov stared wildly at him.

"I knew I could be in danger," he said in measured tones, "but you, how can you know it?"

"Because I, too, belong to them, as you do, and am a member of their society, as you are."

"You... you are a member of the society?"

"I see by your eyes that you expected anything but that from me," Nikolai Vsevolodovich grinned slightly. "But, I beg your pardon, so you already knew there was to be an attempt against you?"

"I never thought so. And don't think so now, either, in spite of your words, though... though who could vouch for anything with those fools!" he suddenly cried out in fury, banging his fist on the table. "I'm not afraid of them! I've broken with them. That one ran by four times and said it was possible ... but," he looked at Stavrogin, "what do you actually know about it?"

"Don't worry, I'm not deceiving you," Stavrogin went on rather coldly, with the air of a man who was merely fulfilling his duty. "You're testing what I know? I know that you joined this society abroad, two years ago, still under the old organization, just before your trip to America, and, I believe, right after our last conversation, of which you wrote me so much in your letter from America. By the way, forgive me for not answering with a letter of my own, and limiting myself to ..."

"To sending money—wait," Shatov stopped him, hastily pulled open a drawer in the table, and took an iridescent banknote from under some papers, "here, take it, the hundred roubles you sent me; without you I'd have perished there. I wouldn't have paid it back for a long time if it weren't for your mother: she gave me that hundred roubles nine months ago, on account of my poverty, after my illness. But go on, please ..."

He was breathless.

"In America you changed your thinking and, on returning to Switzerland, wanted to renounce. They gave no answer, but charged you to receive some printing press here in Russia from somebody, and to keep it until you turned it over to a person who would come to you from them. I don't know it all with complete precision, but that seems right in the main? And you undertook it in the hope, or on the condition, that it would be their last demand, and that after that they would let you go entirely. All this, right or wrong, I learned not from them but quite accidentally. But what you don't seem to know yet is that these gentlemen have no intention of parting with you."

"That's absurd!" Shatov yelled. "I declared honestly that I disagree with them in everything! It's my right, my right of conscience and thought ... I won't have it! There is no power that could..."

"You know, you shouldn't shout," Nikolai Vsevolodovich stopped him very seriously. "This little Verkhovensky is the kind of man who could be eavesdropping on us now, with his own or someone else's ear, maybe in your own entryway. Even the drunkard Lebyadkin was all but obliged to keep watch on you, and perhaps you on him, right? Better tell me: has Verkhovensky accepted your arguments now, or not?"

"He's accepted; he says it's possible, and I have the right..."

"Well, then he's deceiving you. I know that even Kirillov, who hardly belongs to them at all, has furnished information on you; as for agents, they have a lot of them, some who don't even know they're serving the society. You've always been watched. Among other things, Pyotr Verkhovensky came here to resolve your case finally, and is authorized to do so—namely, by destroying you at an opportune moment, as someone who knows too much and may inform. I repeat that this is certain; and allow me to add that for some reason they are fully convinced that you are a spy, and that if you haven't informed yet, you will. Is that true?"

Shatov twisted his mouth on hearing such a question, uttered in such a matter-of-fact tone.

"Even if I were a spy, where would I go to inform?" he said spitefully, without giving a direct answer. "No, enough about me, to hell with me!" he cried, suddenly grasping his original thought, which had shaken him so much, by all evidence incomparably more strongly than the news of his own danger. "You, you, Stavrogin, how could you mix yourself in with such shameless, giftless, lackeyish absurdity! You a member of their society! And this is Nikolai Stavrogin's great exploit!" he cried out, all but in despair.

He even clasped his hands, as though nothing could be more bitter and dismal to him than such a discovery.

"Forgive me," Nikolai Vsevolodovich really was surprised, "but you seem to look upon me as some sort of sun, and upon yourself as some sort of bug compared with me. I noticed it even in your letter from America."

"You... you know... Ah, better let's drop me altogether, altogether!" Shatov suddenly cut himself short. "If you can explain anything about yourself, explain it... Answer my question!" he kept repeating feverishly.

"With pleasure. You ask how I could mix myself in with such a slum? After my communication, I even owe you a certain frankness in this matter. You see, in a strict sense I don't belong to this society at all, never did belong, and have far more right than you to leave them, since I never even joined them. On the contrary, from the very beginning I announced to them that I was no friend of theirs, and if I chanced to help them, it was just so, as an idle man. I participated partly in the reorganization of the society according to the new plan, and that's all. But now they've thought better of it, and have decided among themselves that it's also dangerous to let me go, so it seems that I, too, am under sentence."

"Oh, with them it's capital punishment for everything, and everything's on instructions, with sealed orders, signed by three and a half men. And you believe they're capable!"

"There you're partly right and partly not," Stavrogin went on with the same indifference, even listlessness. "No doubt there's considerable fantasy, as always in such cases: the crew exaggerates its size and significance. In my opinion, if you like, Pyotr Verkhovensky is the only one they have, and it's much too nice of him to consider himself merely the agent of his own society. However, the basic idea is no more stupid than others of the sort. They have connections with the Internationale; they've succeeded in placing agents in Russia, they've even stumbled onto a rather original method... but, of course, only in theory. As for their intentions here, the activities of our Russian organization are such an obscure affair, and almost always so unexpected, that anything might actually be tried. Note that Verkhovensky is a persistent man."