"As many as you have; I give you my great word, not an hour more than you have!"
He kept pacing and did not see her quick, piercing look which suddenly seemed to light up with hope. But the ray of light went out at the same moment.
"If you knew the price of my present impossible sincerity, Liza, if only I could reveal it to you..."
"Reveal? You want to reveal something to me? God save me from your revelations!" she interrupted, almost fearfully.
He stopped and waited uneasily.
"I must confess to you, ever since Switzerland the thought has settled in me that there is something horrible, dirty, and bloody on your soul, and ... at the same time something that makes you look terribly ridiculous. Beware of revealing it to me, if it's true: I'll ridicule you. I'll laugh at you all your life... Aie, you're turning pale again? I won't, I won't, I'll leave at once," she jumped up from the chair with a squeamish and scornful gesture.
"Torment me, punish me, vent your spite on me," he cried out in despair. "You have every right! I knew I didn't love you, and I ruined you. Yes, 'I reserved the moment for myself; I had a hope ... for a long time ... a last hope ... I couldn't resist the light that shone in my heart when you came to me yesterday, yourself, alone, first. I suddenly believed... maybe I believe even now."
"For such noble sincerity I shall repay you in kind. I do not want to be your tenderhearted nurse. Suppose I do indeed become a sick-nurse, unless I incidentally manage to die this very day; still, if I do, it won't be to you, though of course you're worth anyone legless or armless. It has always seemed to me that you would bring me to some place where there lives a huge, evil spider, as big as a man, and we would spend our whole life there looking at him and being afraid.
That's how our mutual love would pass. Address yourself to Dashenka; she'll go with you wherever you like."
"And even now you can't help recalling her?"
"Poor puppy! Give her my regards. Does she know you intend her for your old age in Switzerland? What consideration! What foresight! Aie, who's there?"
At the far end of the room the door opened a tiny bit; someone's head stuck itself in and quickly hid.
"Is that you, Alexei Yegorych?" Stavrogin asked.
"No, it's only me," Pyotr Stepanovich again stuck in the upper half of himself. "Hello, Lizaveta Nikolaevna; or, anyhow, good morning. I just knew I'd find you both in this room. Absolutely for just one moment, Nikolai Vsevolodovich—I hurried here at all costs for a couple of words... most necessary words ... a couple, no more!"
Stavrogin started to go, but after three steps he returned to Liza.
"If you hear anything now, Liza, know this: I am guilty."
She gave a start and looked at him timorously; but he hurriedly went out.
II
The room Pyotr Stepanovich had peeked out from was a big oval anteroom. Before he came, Alexei Yegorych had been sitting there, but he sent him away. Nikolai Vsevolodovich closed the door to the reception room behind himself and stopped in expectation. Pyotr Stepanovich looked him over quickly and inquisitively.
"Well?"
"I mean, if you already know," Pyotr Stepanovich hurried on, wishing, it seemed, to jump into the man's soul with his eyes, "then, of course, none of us is guilty of anything, and you first of all, because it's such a conjunction ... a coincidence of events ... in short, legally it cannot involve you, and I flew here to forewarn you."
"They're burned? Killed?"
"Killed but not burned, and that's the bad thing, but I give you my word of honor that I'm not guilty there either, however much you suspect me—because maybe you do suspect me, eh? Want the whole truth? You see, the thought did indeed occur to me—you prompted me to it yourself, not seriously, teasing me (because you wouldn't really prompt me seriously), but I didn't dare, and I wouldn't have dared for anything, not even for a hundred roubles—and there isn't any profit in it, I mean for me, for me..." (He hurried terribly and spoke like a rattle.) "But look what a coincidence of circumstances: I gave that drunken fool Lebyadkin two hundred and thirty roubles of my own (of my own, you hear, of my own, not a rouble of it was yours, and, moreover, you know that yourself), two days ago, already that evening—you hear, two days ago, not yesterday after the 'reading,' note that: it's a rather important coincidence, because I didn't know anything for certain then about Lizaveta Nikolaevna's going to you or not; and I gave my own money solely because two days ago you distinguished yourself by deciding to announce your secret to everyone. Well, I'm not getting into... it's your business... this chivalry... but, I confess, it surprised me, like a clout on the head. But since I am exceeding weary of all these tragedies—and note that I'm speaking seriously, though I'm using antiquated expressions—since it's all finally harmful to my plans, I swore to myself I'd pack the Lebyadkins off to Petersburg at all costs and without your knowledge, the more so since he was anxious to go there himself. One mistake: I gave him the money on your behalf; was it a mistake, or not? Maybe not, eh? Now listen, listen to how it all turned out..." In the fever of talking he moved up very close to Stavrogin and went to grab him by the lapel of his jacket (maybe on purpose, by God). Stavrogin, with a strong movement, hit him on the arm.
"What's this now ... come on ... you'll break my arm ... the main thing here is how it turned out," he rattled on, not even the least surprised at being hit. "I hand him the money in the evening, so that he and his dear sister can set out the next day at dawn; I charge the scoundrel Liputin with that little business, putting them on the train and seeing them off himself. But the blackguard Liputin felt the need to pull a prank on the public—maybe you heard? At the 'reading'? So listen, listen: the two of them drink, compose verses, half belonging to Liputin; he dresses him up in a tailcoat, assures me he sent him off in the morning, all the while keeping him somewhere in a back closet, in order to push him out onto the platform. But he quickly and unexpectedly gets drunk. Then the notorious scandal, then he's brought home more dead than alive, and Liputin takes the two hundred roubles from him on the sly, leaving him some change. But, unfortunately, it turns out that he had already taken the two hundred out of his pocket in the morning, boasting and showing it where he shouldn't have. And since Fedka was just waiting for that, and had heard something at Kirillov's (remember your hint?), he decided to make use of it. That's the whole truth. I'm glad at least that Fedka didn't find the money— and he was counting on getting a thousand, the scoundrel! He was in a hurry and, it seems, was frightened by the fire himself... Would you believe it, that fire was a real whack on the head for me. No, it's the devil knows what! It's such high-handedness... Look, I won't conceal anything, since I expect so much from you: so, yes, I've had this little idea of a fire ripening in me for a long time, since it's so national and popular; but I was keeping it for a critical hour, for that precious moment when we all rise up and... And they suddenly decided it high-handedly and without any orders, now, precisely when they should have laid low and held their breath! No, it's such highhandedness! ... in short, I still don't know anything, they're talking here about two Shpigulin men... but if ours were in it as well, if any one of them warmed his hands at it—woe to him! You see what it means to slacken even a little! No, this democratic scum with its fivesomes is a poor support; what we need is one splendid, monumental, despotic will, supported by something external and not accidental... Then the fivesomes will also put their tails of obedience between their legs, and their obsequiousness will occasionally come in handy. Anyhow, though it's being shouted in all trumpets that Stavrogin needed to burn his wife, and that's why the town got burned down, still ..."