. . why should I be a loser? Kindly tell me that? For your advantage, eh? I’ve dedicated my ‘Confession’ to her (you didn’t know that?). And how she received it too, ha-ha! But anyway I’ve not behaved like a cad to her, I’ve not done her any harm; but she’s put me to shame and snubbed me . . . though I’ve done you no harm either. If I did refer to ‘leavings’ and things of that sort, still I am telling you the day and the hour and the address of their meeting, and I’ve let you into the whole game . . . from resentment of course, not from generosity. Good-bye, I’m as talkative as a stammerer or a consumptive. Mind you take steps at once, if you deserve to be called a man. The interview is to take place this evening, that’s the truth.”
Ippolit went towards the door, but Myshkin called after him and he stopped in the doorway.
“So then, according to you, Aglaia Ivanovna is going herself to-day to Nastasya Filippovna?” asked Myshkin.
Patches of red came out on his forehead and cheeks.
“I don’t know for a fact, but that’s probably so,” answered Ippolit, looking round. “Yes, it must be so. Nastasya Filippovna couldn’t go to her? And it wouldn’t be at Ganya’s, where there’s a man almost dead. What do you think of the general?”
“It can’t be there, if only for that reason,” Myshkin put in. “How could she get away even if she wanted to? “Vbu don’t know … the habits of the household. She couldn’t get away from home alone to see Nastasya Filippovna. It’s nonsense!”
“Look here, prince, nobody jumps out of window, but when the house is on fire the grandest gentleman or lady is ready to jump out of window. When it’s a case of necessity, there’s no help for it, and our young lady will even go to see Nastasya Filippovna. And don’t they let them go anywhere, your young ladies?”
“No, I didn’t mean that…”
“Well, if not, she’s only to go down the steps, and go straight there, and she needn’t ever go home again. There are cases when one may sometimes burn one’s ships and not go home again. Life does not consist only of lunches and dinners and Prince S.’s. I fancy you take Aglaia Ivanovna for a young lady or a boarding-school miss. Wait till seven or eight o’clock. If I were in your place, I’d send some one to be on the watch there to catch the very minute when she comes down the steps. Send Kolya. He’ll be deliqhted to plav the spv, believe me, for vour sake, I mean … for everything’s relative…. Ha-ha!”
Ippolit went out. Myshkin had no reason for asking anyone to spy for him, even if he had been capable of doing so. Aglaia’s command that he should stay at home was now almost explained. Perhaps she meant to come and fetch him, or perhaps it was that she did not want him to turn up there and so had told him to stay at home. That might be so, too. His head was in a whirl; the whole room was turning round. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes.
In either case it was final, conclusive. Myshkin did not think of Aglaia as a young lady, or a boarding-school miss. He felt now that he had been uneasy for a long time, and that it was just something of this kind he had been dreading. But what did she want to see her for? A shiver ran over Myshkin’s whole body. He was in a fever again.
No, he didn’t look on her as a child! He had been horrified by some of her views, some of her sayings of late. He sometimes fancied that she had seemed too reserved, too controlled, and he remembered that this had alarmed him. He had been trying during those days not to think about it, he had dismissed oppressive ideas; but what lay hidden in that soul? The thought had worried him for a long time, though he had faith in that soul. And now all this must be settled and revealed that day. An awful thought! And again— “that woman!” Why did it always seem to him that that woman was bound to appear at the last moment, and tear asunder his fate like a rotten thread? That it had always seemed so he was ready to swear now, though he was almost delirious. If he had tried to forget “her” of late, it was simply because he was afraid of her. Did he love that woman or hate her? He had not put that question to himself once that day. His heart was clear on one point: he knew whom he loved. … He was not so much afraid of the meeting of the two, not of the strangeness, not of the unknown cause of that meeting, not of what it might lead to, whatever it might be — he was afraid of Nastasya Filippovna. He remembered a few days later that all through those feverish hours her eyes, her glance, were before him, her words in his ears — strange words, though little remained of them in his memory, when those feverish hours of misery were over. He scarcely remembered that Vera had brought him his dinner,
that he ate it, and did not know whether he slept after dinner or not. All he knew was that he only began to see things clearly that evening, when Aglaia came towards him on the verandah, and he jumped up from the sofa and went to meet her. It was a quarter past seven. Aglaia was entirely alone, dressed simply, as it seemed hastily, in a light burnous. Her face was pale as it had been that morning, and her eyes glittered with a dry, hard light. He had never seen such an expression in her eyes. She looked at him attentively.
“You are quite ready,” she observed quietly, and with apparent composure. “You are dressed and have your hat in your hand. So you’ve been warned, and I know by whom — Ippolit?”
“Yes, he told me . . ,” muttered Myshkin, more dead than alive.
“Come along. “Vbu know that you must escort me there. You are strong enough to go out, I suppose?”
“I’m strong enough, but… is this possible?”
He broke off instantly and could say no more. This was his one attempt to restrain the mad girl, and after it he followed her like a slave. Confused as his ideas were, he realised that she would certainly go there even without him, and that therefore he was bound to go with her in any case. He divined how strong her determination was. It was beyond him to check this wild impulse. They walked in silence the whole way, scarcely uttering a word. He only noticed that she knew the way well, and when he wanted to go a rather longer way because the road was more deserted, and suggested this to her, she seemed to listen with strained attention and answered abruptly:
“It’s all the same!”
When they had almost reached Darya Alexeyevna’s abode (a big, old, wooden house) there came down the steps a gorgeously dressed lady with a young girl. They both got into an elegant carriage which stood waiting at the steps, talking and laughing loudly. They did not once glance at the approaching couple and seemed not to notice them. As soon as the carriage had driven off, the door instantly opened a second time, and Rogozhin, who had been waiting there, admitted Myshkin and Aglaia and closed the door behind them.
“There’s no one in the whole house now, except us four,” he observed aloud, and looked strangely at Myshkin.
In the first room they went into, Nastasya Filippovna was waiting. She too was dressed very simply and all in black. She stood up to greet them, but did not smile or even give Myshkin her hand.
Her intent and uneasy eyes were fastened on Aglaia. The two ladies sat at a little distance from one another — Aglaia on a sofa in a corner of the room, Nastasya Filippovna at the window. Myshkin and Rogozhin did not sit down, and she did not invite them to do so. Myshkin looked with perplexity and, as it were, with pain at Rogozhin, but the latter still wore the same smile. The silence lasted some moments.
At length an ominous look passed over Nastasya Filippovna’s face. Her gaze grew obstinate, hard, and full of hatred, and it was riveted all the time upon her visitors. Aglaia was evidently confused, but not intimidated. As she walked in, she scarcely looked at her rival, and, for the time, sat with downcast eyes, as though musing. Once or twice she looked, as it were, casually round the room. There was an unmistakable shade of disgust on her face, as though she were afraid of contamination here. She mechanically arranged her dress, and even once restlessly changed her seat, moving to the other end of the sofa. She was hardly perhaps conscious of her actions; but their unconsciousness made them even more insulting. At last she looked resolutely straight into Nastasya Filippovna’s face and read at once all that was revealed in the ominous gleam in her rival’s eyes. Woman understood woman. Aglaia shuddered.
“You know, of course, why I asked you to come,” she brought out at last, but in a very low voice, and pausing once ortwice even in this brief sentence.
“No, I know nothing about it,” Nastasya