Gania lit a cigarette and offered one to the prince. The latter accepted the offer, but did not talk, being unwilling to disturb Gania’s work. He commenced to examine the study and its contents. But Gania hardly so much as glanced at the papers lying before him; he was absent and thoughtful, and his smile and general appearance struck the prince still more disagreeably now that the two were left alone together.
All laughed again.
“I trust your voice, when I hear you speak. I quite understand that you and I cannot be put on a level, of course.”

Rogojin stared intently at them; then he took his hat, and without a word, left the room.

“How so?” asked Adelaida, with curiosity.
“Oh, he won’t shoot himself!” cried several voices, sarcastically.
The prince tried to speak, but could not form his words; a great weight seemed to lie upon his breast and suffocate him.
Five seconds after the disappearance of the last actor in this scene, the police arrived. The whole episode had not lasted more than a couple of minutes. Some of the spectators had risen from their places, and departed altogether; some merely exchanged their seats for others a little further off; some were delighted with the occurrence, and talked and laughed over it for a long time.
“Stop a minute; where are you off to? Who is this abbot?” cried Mrs. Epanchin to her retreating husband in a tone of excited annoyance.
“One word, just one word from you, and I’m saved.”
“Now I’ll tell you my secret conviction. I’m certain that she’s doing this to revenge herself on me, on account of the past, though I assure you that all the time I was blameless. I blush at the very idea. And now she turns up again like this, when I thought she had finally disappeared! Where’s Rogojin all this time? I thought she was Mrs. Rogojin, long ago.”

“Didn’t I tell you the truth now, when I said you were in love?” he said, coming up to Muishkin of his own accord, and stopping him.

“From the portrait!”
Their entrance caused some slight commotion.
“No! do you think so?” said the general, catching at the idea.
“Look here, Parfen; if you love her so much, surely you must be anxious to earn her respect? And if you do so wish, surely you may hope to? I said just now that I considered it extraordinary that she could still be ready to marry you. Well, though I cannot yet understand it, I feel sure she must have some good reason, or she wouldn’t do it. She is sure of your love; but besides that, she must attribute _something_ else to you--some good qualities, otherwise the thing would not be. What you have just said confirms my words. You say yourself that she found it possible to speak to you quite differently from her usual manner. You are suspicious, you know, and jealous, therefore when anything annoying happens to you, you exaggerate its significance. Of course, of course, she does not think so ill of you as you say. Why, if she did, she would simply be walking to death by drowning or by the knife, with her eyes wide open, when she married you. It is impossible! As if anybody would go to their death deliberately!”
“Oh, you were raving, you were in a fever; you are still half delirious.”
“Our man-servant?” exclaimed several voices at once.
“Did you hit her?”
“She understood nothing of what I said to her, and did not know what I wanted her to do, and yet she blessed you; that shows she wished to do so herself. Well, goodbye; it’s time you went, and I must go too.”

As to the girls, nothing was said openly, at all events; and probably very little in private. They were proud damsels, and were not always perfectly confidential even among themselves. But they understood each other thoroughly at the first word on all occasions; very often at the first glance, so that there was no need of much talking as a rule.

“Did you get my hedgehog?” she inquired, firmly and almost angrily.

“Oh, go on,” he said, “finish your sentence, by all means. Say how odd it appears to you that a man fallen to such a depth of humiliation as I, can ever have been the actual eye-witness of great events. Go on, _I_ don’t mind! Has _he_ found time to tell you scandal about me?”

“At any rate, your uncle has a kind heart,” remarked the prince, who really had to force himself to speak to the nephew, so much did he dislike him.

“Oh! Aglaya Ivanovna did,” said Colia.

Nina Alexandrovna’s question betrayed intense annoyance. Gania waited a moment and then said, without taking the trouble to conceal the irony of his tone:

“But Nastasia Philipovna seems to me to be such a _sensible_ woman, and, as such, why should she run blindly into this business? That’s what puzzles me so,” said the prince.

“Russian books, indeed? Then, of course, you can read and write quite correctly?”
“Yes,” said the prince, squeezing the word out with difficulty owing to the dreadful beating of his heart.

“Come, that’s good! How can you maintain such a paradox? If you are serious, that is. I cannot allow such a statement about the landed proprietors to pass unchallenged. Why, you are a landed proprietor yourself!” cried Prince S. hotly.

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.

“Where they played last night. Then I found this bench and sat down, and thought and thought--and at last I fell fast asleep.”

“‘Perhaps you are exaggerating--if you were to take proper measures perhaps--”
The prince observed that Alexandra appeared to be angry with Evgenie, because he spoke on a serious subject in a frivolous manner, pretending to be in earnest, but with an under-current of irony.
“Nonsense,” cried Nastasia Philipovna, seizing the poker and raking a couple of logs together. No sooner did a tongue of flame burst out than she threw the packet of notes upon it.
“Surely you--are from abroad?” he inquired at last, in a confused sort of way. He had begun his sentence intending to say, “Surely you are not Prince Muishkin, are you?” “Here is another to whom you should apologize,” said the prince, pointing to Varia.
“No finessing, please. What did you write about?”
“How did he strike you, prince?” asked Gania, suddenly. “Did he seem to be a serious sort of a man, or just a common rowdy fellow? What was your own opinion about the matter?”

“No, no--prince, not now! Now is a dream! And it is too, too important! It is to be the hour of Fate to me--_my own_ hour. Our interview is not to be broken in upon by every chance comer, every impertinent guest--and there are plenty of such stupid, impertinent fellows”--(he bent over and whispered mysteriously, with a funny, frightened look on his face)--“who are unworthy to tie your shoe, prince. I don’t say _mine_, mind--you will understand me, prince. Only _you_ understand me, prince--no one else. _He_ doesn’t understand me, he is absolutely--_absolutely_ unable to sympathize. The first qualification for understanding another is Heart.”

“I didn’t come here for that purpose, Parfen. That was not in my mind--”

III.

For that had happened at this moment, which for two months had been his nightmare; which had filled his soul with dread and shame--the meeting between his father and Nastasia Philipovna. He had often tried to imagine such an event, but had found the picture too mortifying and exasperating, and had quietly dropped it. Very likely he anticipated far worse things than was at all necessary; it is often so with vain persons. He had long since determined, therefore, to get his father out of the way, anywhere, before his marriage, in order to avoid such a meeting; but when Nastasia entered the room just now, he had been so overwhelmed with astonishment, that he had not thought of his father, and had made no arrangements to keep him out of the way. And now it was too late--there he was, and got up, too, in a dress coat and white tie, and Nastasia in the very humour to heap ridicule on him and his family circle; of this last fact, he felt quite persuaded. What else had she come for? There were his mother and his sister sitting before her, and she seemed to have forgotten their very existence already; and if she behaved like that, he thought, she must have some object in view.
“No, I don’t think that. I know you don’t love me.”