he nodded, motioning him to go within the curtain. Myshkin went in.
“It’s dark here,” he said.
“One can see,” muttered Rogozhin.
“I can scarcely see … there’s a bed.”
“Go nearer,” Rogozhin suggested softly.
Myshkin took a step nearer, then a second, and stood still. He stood still and looked for a minute or two. Neither of them uttered a word all the while they stood by the bedside. Myshkin’s heart beat so violently that it seemed as though it were audible in the death-like stillness of the room. But his eyes were by now accustomed to the darkness, so that he could make out the whole bed. Some one lay asleep on it, in a perfectly motionless sleep; not the faintest stir, not the faintest breath could be heard. The sleeper was covered over from head to foot with a white sheet and the limbs were vaguely defined; all that could be seen was that a human figure lay there,
stretched at full length. All around in disorder at the foot of the bed, on chairs beside it, and even on the floor, clothes had been flung in disorder; a rich white silk dress, flowers, and ribbons. On a little table at the head of the bed there was the glitter of diamonds that had been taken off and thrown down. At the end of the bed there was a crumpled heap of lace and on the white lace the toes of a bare foot peeped out from under the sheet; it seemed as though it had been carved out of marble and it was horridly still. Myshkin looked and felt that as he looked, the room became more and more still and death-like. Suddenly there was the buzz of a fly which flew over the bed and settled on the pillow. Myshkin started.
“Let’s go.” Rogozhin touched his arm. They went out, and sat down on the same chairs, facing one another again. Myshkin trembled more and more violently, and never took his questioning eyes off Rogozhin’s face.
“I notice you are trembling, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” Rogozhin said at last, “almost as much as you did when you had your illness. Do you remember, in Moscow? Or as you had once before a fit? I can’t think what I should do with you now….”
Myshkin listened, straining every effort to understand, and still his eyes questioned him.
“Was it . . . you?” he brought out at last, nodding towards the curtain.
“It was I,” Rogozhin whispered, and he looked down.
They were si lent for five minutes.
“For if,” Rogozhin began, continuing suddenly as though his speech had not been interrupted, “you are ill, have your fit and scream, some one may hear from the street or the yard, and guess that there are people in the flat. They’ll begin knocking and come in … for they all think I am not at home. I haven’t lighted a candle for fear they should guess from the street or the yard. For when I am away, I take the key and no one ever comes in to tidy the place for three or four days in my absence. That’s my habit. So I took care they shouldn’t find out we are here….”
“Stay,” said Myshkin. “I asked the porter and the old woman this morning whether Nastasya Filippovna hadn’t stayed the night here. So they must know already.”
“I know that you asked them. I told Pafnutyevna that Nastasya Filippovna came here yesterday and went away to Pavlovsk and that she was only here ten minutes. And they don’t know she stayed the night here — no one knows it. I came in with her yesterday quite secretly, as we did just now. I’d been thinking on the way that she wouldn’t care to come in secretly, but not a bit of it! She whispered, she walked on tip-toe, she drew her skirts round her, and held them in her hand that they might not rustle. She shook her finger at me on the stairs — it was you she was afraid of. She was mad with terror in the train, and it was her own wish to stay the night here. I thought of taking her to her lodgings at the widow’s — but not a bit of it! ‘He’ll find me there as soon as it’s daylight,’ she said, ‘but you will hide me and early to-morrow morning we’ll set off for Moscow,’ and then she wanted to go somewhere to Orel. And as she went to bed she kept saying we’d go to Orel. . .
“Stay; what are you going to do now, Parfyon. What do you want to do?”
“I wonder about you, you keep trembling. We’ll stay the night here together. There is no bed but that one, and I thought we might take the pillows off the two sofas and make up a bed here for vou and me beside the curtain, so that we can be together. For if they come in and begin looking round or searching, they’ll see her at once and take her away. They’ll begin questioning me, I shall say it was me, and they’ll take me away at once. So let her lie here now beside us, beside you and me….”
“Yes, yes!” Myshkin agreed warmly.
“So we won’t confess and let them take her away.”
“Not on any account!” Myshkin decided. “Certainly not.”
“That’s what I decided, lad, not to give her up on any account to any one! We’ll keep quiet all night. I only went out for an hour this morning, except for that I’ve been with her all the time. And then I went to find you in the evening. Another thing I am afraid of is that it’s so hot and there may be a smell. Do you notice a smell?”
“Perhaps I do, I don’t know. There certainly will be by the morning.”
“I covered her with American leather, good American leather, and put the sheet over it, and I put four jars of Zhdanov’s disinfectant there uncorked, they are standing there now.”
“Just as they did that time … at Moscow?”
“On account of the smell, brother. And you see how she is lying. . . . You must look in the morning when it’s light. What’s the matter, can’t you stand up?” Rogozhin asked with apprehensive wonder, seeing that Myshkin was trembling so much that he could not get up.
“My legs won’t move,” muttered Myshkin, “it’s from terror, I know. . . . When the fear is over I shall get up.”
“Stay, I’ll make up our bed and you’d better lie down . . . and I’ll lie down too . .. and we’ll listen, for I don’t know yet, lad, for I don’t understand it all yet, I warn you of that beforehand, so that you may know all about it beforehand….”
Muttering these unintelligible words, Rogozhin began making up the beds. It was evident that he had thought of these beds, possibly even that morning. The previous night he had lain on the sofa. But there was not room for two on the sofa, and he was set on their sleeping side by side, that was why, with much effort, he now dragged, right across the room, the various cushions off the two sofas and laid them by the curtain. He made the bed after a fashion; he went up to Myshkin, tenderly and eagerly took him by the arm, raised him and led him to the bed, but Myshkin found he could walk by himself, so his terror was passing off, and yet he still was trembling.
“Because,” Rogozhin began making Myshkin lie down on the left on the best cushions, while without undressing he stretched himself out on the right, clasping his hands behind his head, “because it’s hot, brother, and you know there may be a smell… I am afraid to open the windows; my mother has got jars of flowers, heaps of flowers, and they have such a delicious smell; I thought of bringing them in, but Pafnutyevna would have been suspicious, she is inquisitive.”
“She is inquisitive,” Myshkin assented.
“Shall we buy nosegays and put flowers all round her? But I think, friend, it will make us sad to see her with flowers round her!”
“Listen!” said Myshkin uncertainly, as though he were looking for what he meant to ask and at once forgetting it again, “listen, tell me what did you do it with? A knife? The same one?”
“The same one.”
“There’s something else; I want to ask you something else, Parfyon … I want to ask you a great many questions, all about it… but you had better tell me first, to begin with, so that I may know; did you mean to kill her before my wedding, at the church door… with a knife?”
“I don’t know whether I meant to or not,” Rogozhin answered drily, seeming somewhat surprised at the question and not understanding it.
“Did you ever take the knife with you to Pavlovsk?”

“No, never. All I can tell you about the knife is this, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” he added after a pause, “I took it out of a locked drawer this morning, for it all happened this morning, about four o’clock. It had been lying in a book all the time. . . . And . . . and . . . another thing seems strange: the knife went in three or four inches . . . just under the left breast . . . and there wasn’t more than half a tablespoonful of blood flowed on to her chemise, there was no more….”
“That, that, that,” Myshkin sat up suddenly in great agitation, “that I know, I’ve read