He had the key in his hand. Mounting the staircase he turned and signalled to the prince to go more softly; he opened the door very quietly, let the prince in, followed him, locked the door behind him, and put the key in his pocket.
‘Come along,’ he whispered.
He had spoken in a whisper all the way. In spite of his apparent outward composure, he was evidently in a state of great mental agitation. Arrived in a large salon, next to the study, he went to the window and cautiously beckoned the prince up to him.
‘When you rang the bell this morning I thought it must be you. I went to the door on tip-toe and heard you talking to the servant opposite. I had told her before that if any-one came and rang— especially you, and I gave her your name—she was not to tell about me. Then I thought, what if he goes and stands opposite and looks up, or waits about to watch the house? So I came to this very window, looked out, and there you were staring straight at me. That’s how it came about.’
‘Where is Nastasia Philipovna?’ asked the prince, breath-lessly.
‘She’s here,’ replied Rogojin, slowly, after a slight pause. ‘Where?’
Rogojin raised his eyes and gazed intently at the prince. ‘Come,’ he said.
He continued to speak in a whisper, very deliberately as before, and looked strangely thoughtful and dreamy. Even while he told the story of how he had peeped through the blind, he gave the impression of wishing to say something else. They entered the study. In this room some changes had taken place since the prince last saw it. It was now divided into two equal parts by a heavy green silk curtain stretched across it, separating the alcove beyond, where stood Rogo-jin’s bed, from the rest of the room.
The heavy curtain was drawn now, and it was very dark. The bright Petersburg summer nights were already begin-ning to close in, and but for the full moon, it would have been dificult to distinguish anything in Rogojin’s dismal room, with the drawn blinds. They could just see one an-others faces, however, though not in detail. Rogojin’s face was white, as usual. His glittering eyes watched the prince with an intent stare.
‘Had you not better light a candle?’ said Muishkin.
‘No, I needn’t,’ replied Rogojin, and taking the oth-er by the hand he drew him down to a chair. He himself took a chair opposite and drew it up so close that he almost pressed against the prince’s knees. At their side was a little round table.
Sit down,’ said Rogojin; ‘let’s rest a bit.’ There was silence for a moment.
‘I knew you would be at that hotel,’ he continued, just as men sometimes commence a serious conversation by dis-cussing any outside subject before leading up to the main point. ‘As I entered the passage it struck me that perhaps you were sitting and waiting for me, just as I was waiting for you. Have you been to the old lady at Ismailofsky bar-racks?’
‘Yes,’ said the prince, squeezing the word out with difi-culty owing to the dreadful beating of his heart.
‘I thought you would. ‘They’ll talk about it,’ I thought; so I determined to go and fetch you to spend the night here— ‘We will be together,’ I thought, ‘for this one night—‘’
‘Rogojin, WHERE is Nastasia Philipovna?’ said the prince, suddenly rising from his seat. He was quaking in all his limbs, and his words came in a scarcely audible whisper. Rogojin rose also.
‘There,’ he whispered, nodding his head towards the cur-tain.
‘Asleep?’ whispered the prince.
Rogojin looked intently at him again, as before. ‘Let’s go in—but you mustn’t—well—let’s go in.’
He lifted the curtain, paused—and turned to the prince. ‘Go in,’ he said, motioning him to pass behind the curtain. Muishkin went in.
It’s so dark,’ he said.
‘You can see quite enough,’ muttered Rogojin. ‘I can just see there’s a bed—‘
‘Go nearer,’ suggested Rogojin, softly.
The prince took a step forward—then another—and paused. He stood and stared for a minute or two.
Neither of the men spoke a word while at the bedside. The prince’s heart beat so loud that its knocking seemed to be distinctly audible in the deathly silence.
But now his eyes had become so far accustomed to the darkness that he could distinguish the whole of the bed. Someone was asleep upon it—in an absolutely motionless sleep. Not the slightest movement was perceptible, not the faintest breathing could be heard. The sleeper was covered with a white sheet; the outline of the limbs was hardly dis-tinguishable. He could only just make out that a human being lay outstretched there.
All around, on the bed, on a chair beside it, on the floor, were scattered the different portions of a magnificent white silk dress, bits of lace, ribbons and flowers. On a small table at the bedside glittered a mass of diamonds, torn off and thrown down anyhow. From under a heap of lace at the end of the bed peeped a small white foot, which looked as though it had been chiselled out of marble; it was terribly still.
The prince gazed and gazed, and felt that the more he gazed the more death-like became the silence. Suddenly a fly awoke somewhere, buzzed across the room, and settled on the pillow. The prince shuddered.
‘Let’s go,’ said Rogojin, touching his shoulder. They left the alcove and sat down in the two chairs they had occupied before, opposite to one another. The prince trembled more
and more violently, and never took his questioning eyes off Rogojin’s face.
‘I see you are shuddering, Lef Nicolaievitch,’ said the lat-ter, at length, ‘almost as you did once in Moscow, before your fit; don’t you remember? I don’t know what I shall do with you—‘
The prince bent forward to listen, putting all the strain he could muster upon his understanding in order to take in what Rogojin said, and continuing to gaze at the latter’s face.
‘Was it you?’ he muttered, at last, motioning with his head towards the curtain.
‘Yes, it was I,’ whispered Rogojin, looking down. Neither spoke for five minutes.
‘Because, you know,’ Rogojin recommenced, as though continuing a former sentence, ‘if you were ill now, or had a fit, or screamed, or anything, they might hear it in the yard, or even in the street, and guess that someone was passing the night in the house. They would all come and knock and want to come in, because they know I am not at home. I didn’t light a candle for the same reason. When I am not here—for two or three days at a time, now and then—no one comes in to tidy the house or anything; those are my orders. So that I want them to not know we are spending the night here—‘
‘Wait,’ interrupted the prince. ‘I asked both the porter and the woman whether Nastasia Philipovna had spent last night in the house; so they knew—‘
‘I know you asked. I told them that she had called in for
ten minutes, and then gone straight back to Pavlofsk. No one knows she slept here. Last night we came in just as care-fully as you and I did today. I thought as I came along with her that she would not like to creep in so secretly, but I was quite wrong. She whispered, and walked on tip-toe; she car-ried her skirt over her arm, so that it shouldn’t rustle, and she held up her finger at me on the stairs, so that I shouldn’t make a noise—it was you she was afraid of. She was mad with terror in the train, and she begged me to bring her to this house. I thought of taking her to her rooms at the Is-mailofsky barracks first; but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said, ‘No—not there; he’ll find me out at once there. Take me to your own house, where you can hide me, and tomor-row we’ll set off for Moscow.’ Thence she would go to Orel, she said. When she went to bed, she was still talking about going to Orel.’
‘Wait! What do you intend to do now, Parfen?’
‘Well, I’m afraid of you. You shudder and tremble so. We’ll pass the night here together. There are no other beds besides that one; but I’ve thought how we’ll manage. I’ll take the cushions off all the sofas, and lay them down on the floor, up against the curtain here—for you and me—so that we shall be together. For if they come in and look about now, you know, they’ll find her, and carry her away, and they’ll be asking me questions, and I shall say I did it, and then they’ll take me away, too, don’t you see? So let her lie close to us—close to you and me.
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed the prince, warmly.
‘So we will not say anything about it, or let them take
her away?’
‘Not for anything!’ cried the other; ‘no, no, no!’
‘So I had decided, my friend; not to give her up to anyone,’ continued Rogojin. ‘We’ll be very quiet. I have only been out of the house one hour all day, all the rest of the time I have been with her. I dare say the air is very bad here. It is so hot. Do you find it bad?’
‘I don’t know—perhaps—by morning it will be.’
‘I’ve covered her with oil-cloth—best American oilcloth, and put the sheet over that, and four
