He got up and was opening the casement.
"Don't throw it away, why should you?" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch checked him.
"It's worth something. Besides, tomorrow people will begin saying that there are revolvers lying about under Shatov's window.
Put it back, that's right; sit down.
Tell me, why do you seem to be penitent for having thought I should come to kill you?
I have not come now to be reconciled, but to talk of something necessary.
Enlighten me to begin with. You didn't give me that blow because of my connection with your wife?"
"You know I didn't, yourself," said Shatov, looking down again.
"And not because you believed the stupid gossip about Darya Pavlovna?"
"No, no, of course not!
It's nonsense!
My sister told me from the very first..." Shatov said, harshly and impatiently, and even with a slight stamp of his foot.
"Then I guessed right and you too guessed right," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went on in a tranquil voice. "You are right. Marya Timofyevna Lebyadkin is my lawful wife, married to me four and a half years ago in Petersburg.
I suppose the blow was on her account?"
Shatov, utterly astounded, listened in silence.
"I guessed, but did not believe it," he muttered at last, looking strangely at Stavrogin.
"And you struck me?"
Shatov flushed and muttered almost incoherently:
"Because of your fall... your lie.
I didn't go up to you to punish you... I didn't know when I went up to you that I should strike you... I did it because you meant so much to me in my life... I..."
"I understand, I understand, spare your words.
I am sorry you are feverish. I've come about a most urgent matter."
"I have been expecting you too long." Shatov seemed to be quivering all over, and he got up from his seat. "Say what you have to say... I'll speak too... later."
He sat down.
"What I have come about is nothing of that kind," began Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, scrutinising him with curiosity. "Owing to certain circumstances I was forced this very day to choose such an hour to come and tell you that they may murder you."
Shatov looked wildly at him.
"I know that I may be in some danger," he said in measured tones, "but how can you have come to know of it?"
"Because I belong to them as you do, and am a member of their society, just as you are."
"You... you are a member of the society?"
"I see from your eyes that you were prepared for anything from me rather than that," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, with a faint smile. "But, excuse me, you knew then that there would be an attempt on your life?"
"Nothing of the sort.
And I don't think so now, in spite of your words, though... though there's no being sure of anything with these fools!" he cried suddenly in a fury, striking the table with his fist.
"I'm not afraid of them!
I've broken with them.
That fellow's run here four times to tell me it was possible... but"—he looked at Stavrogin—"what do you know about it, exactly?"
"Don't be uneasy; I am not deceiving you," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went on, rather coldly, with the air of a man who is only fulfilling a duty.
"You question me as to what I know.
I know that you entered that society abroad, two years ago, at the time of the old organisation, just before you went to America, and I believe, just after our last conversation, about which you wrote so much to me in your letter from America.
By the way, I must apologise for not having answered you by letter, but confined myself to..."
"To sending the money; wait a bit," Shatov interrupted, hurriedly pulling out a drawer in the table and taking from under some papers a rainbow-coloured note. "Here, take it, the hundred roubles you sent me; but for you I should have perished out there.
I should have been a long time paying it back if it had not been for your mother. She made me a present of that note nine months ago, because I was so badly off after my illness.
But, go on, please...."
He was breathless.
"In America you changed your views, and when you came back you wanted to resign.
They gave you no answer, but charged you to take over a printing press here in Russia from someone, and to keep it till you handed it over to someone who would come from them for it.
I don't know the details exactly, but I fancy that's the position in outline.
You undertook it in the hope, or on the condition, that it would be the last task they would require of you, and that then they would release you altogether.
Whether that is so or not, I learnt it, not from them, but quite by chance.
But now for what I fancy you don't know; these gentry have no intention of parting with you."
"That's absurd!" cried Shatov.