"You're a psychologist," Stavrogin was turning paler and paler, "though you are partly mistaken about the reasons for my marriage ... And who, incidentally, could have given you all this information?" he forced himself to grin. "Could it be Kirillov? But he had no part in it..."

"You're turning pale?"

"What do you want, anyway?" Nikolai Vsevolodovich finally raised his voice. "I've sat for half an hour under your lash, you could at least politely let me go ... if you indeed have no reasonable purpose in acting this way with me."

"Reasonable purpose?"

"Undoubtedly. It was your duty at least to announce your purpose to me finally. I kept waiting for you to do so, but all I've found is frenzied spite. I ask you to open the gate for me."

He got up from the chair. Shatov rushed frantically after him.

"Kiss the earth, flood it with tears, ask forgiveness!" he cried out, seizing him by the shoulder.

"Anyhow, I didn't kill you... that morning ... I put both hands behind my back..." Stavrogin said, almost with pain, looking down.

"Say it all, say it all! You came to warn me about the danger, you allowed me to speak, you want to announce your marriage publicly tomorrow! ... Can't I see by your face that you're at grips with some awesome new thought?... Stavrogin, why am I condemned to believe in you unto ages of ages? Would I be able to talk like this with anyone else? I have chastity, yet I wasn't afraid of my nakedness, for I was speaking with Stavrogin. I wasn't afraid to caricature a great thought by my touch, for Stavrogin was listening to me... Won't I kiss your footprints when you've gone? I cannot tear you out of my heart, Nikolai Stavrogin!"

"I'm sorry I cannot love you, Shatov," Nikolai Vsevolodovich said coldly.

"I know you cannot, and I know you're not lying. Listen, I can set everything right: I'll get you that hare!"

Stavrogin was silent.

"You're an atheist because you're a squire, an ultimate squire. You've lost the distinction between evil and good because you've ceased to recognize your own nation. A new generation is coming, straight from the nation's heart, and you won't recognize it, neither will the Verkhovenskys, son or father, nor will I, for I, too, am a squire—I, the son of your serf and lackey Pashka... Listen, acquire God by labor; the whole essence is there, or else you'll disappear like vile mildew; do it by labor."

"God by labor? What labor?"

"Peasant labor. Go, leave your wealth... Ah! you're laughing, you're afraid it will turn out to be flimflam."

But Stavrogin was not laughing.

"You suppose God can be acquired by labor, and precisely by peasant labor?" he repeated, after a moment's thought, as if he had indeed encountered something new and serious which was worth pondering. "Incidentally," he suddenly passed on to a new thought, "you've just reminded me: do you know that I'm not rich at all, so there's nothing to leave? I'm hardly even able to secure Marya Timofeevna's future... Another thing: I came to ask you if it's possible for you not to abandon Marya Timofeevna in the future, since you alone may have some influence on her poor mind ... I say it just in case."

"All right, all right, you and Marya Timofeevna," Shatov waved his hand, holding a candle in the other, "all right, later, of itself... Listen, go to Tikhon."

"Who?"

"Tikhon. Tikhon, a former bishop, retired for reasons of health, lives here in town, within town limits, in our Saint Yefimi-Bogorodsky monastery."

"What's it all about?"

"Never mind. People go and see him. You should go to him; what is it to you? Well, what is it to you?"

"First time I've heard of him, and... I've never seen that sort of people before. Thank you, I'll go."

"This way," Shatov walked downstairs with the light. "Go," he flung open the gate to the street.

"I won't come to you anymore, Shatov," Stavrogin said softly, stepping through the gate.

Darkness and rain continued as before.

2: Night (Continued)

I

He walked the whole length of Bogoyavlensky Street; at last the road went downhill, his feet slid in the mud, a wide, misty, as if empty space opened out suddenly—the river. Houses turned to hovels, the street vanished into a multitude of disorderly lanes. For a long time Nikolai Vsevolodovich made his way along the fences without straying from the bank, but finding his way surely and without even thinking much about it. He was occupied with something else, and looked about him in surprise when suddenly, coming out of deep thought, he found himself almost in the middle of our long, wet pontoon bridge. There was not a soul around, so that it seemed strange to him when all at once, almost at his elbow, he heard a politely familiar, incidentally rather pleasant voice, with that sweetly drawn-out intonation flaunted among us by overcivilized tradesmen or young, curly-headed sales-clerks from the shopping arcade.

"Will you allow me, dear mister, to borrow a bit of your umbrella for myself?"^[97]

In fact some figure crept, or merely meant to make a pretense of creeping, under his umbrella. The tramp walked along beside him, almost elbow to elbow, as soldier boys say. Slowing his pace, Nikolai Vsevolodovich bent down to see, as well as he could in the dark: the man was not tall and looked like some little tradesman on a spree; his clothes were neither warm nor sightly; a wet flannel cap with a torn-off peak perched on his shaggy, curly head. He seemed to be very dark-haired, lean, and swarthy; his eyes were large, undoubtedly black, very shiny, and had a yellow cast, like a Gypsy's—that could be guessed even in the dark. He must have been about forty, and was not drunk.

"Do you know me?" asked Nikolai Vsevolodovich.

"Mister Stavrogin, Nikolai Vsevolodovich; you were pointed out to me at the station the moment the train stopped two Sundays ago. Besides from the fact that I heard about you before."

"From Pyotr Stepanovich? You... are you Fedka the Convict?"

"I was baptized Fyodor Fyodorovich; I've still got a natural parent here in these parts, sir, an old woman, God love her, growing right into the ground, prays to God for me daily, day and night, so as thereby not to waste her old woman's time lying on the stove."

"You're a fugitive from hard labor?"

"Changed my destiny. Handed over books and bells and everything else, because they aimed to settle my hash with that hard labor, sir, and for me it was far-r-r too long a wait."

"What are you doing here?"

"Watching the clock go round. Then, too, my uncle died here last week in prison, on account of bad money, so in his memory I threw a couple of dozen stones at the dogs—that's all my doings so far. Besides from that, Pyotr Stepanovich is kindly promising me a passport, good for all of Russia—a merchant's, for example—-so I'm also waiting on his favor. Because, he says, papa lost you at cards in the Engullish club, and I, he says, find this inhumanness unjust. Maybe you could stoop to three roubles, sir, for tea, to warm up?"

"So you've been watching for me here; I don't like that. On whose orders?"

"As for orders, there was no such thing from anybody, sir, it's solely from knowing your loving-kindness, so famous to the whole world. Our income, you know yourself, is either a handful of rye or a poke in the eye. Granted, last Friday I stuffed myself with pie like nobody's business, but after that I gave up eating for a day, starved for another, and fasted for a third. There's plenty of water in the river, I'm breeding carp in my belly ... So maybe Your Honor will be generous; and, as it happens, I've got a lady friend waiting not far from here, only one had better not come to her without a rouble."