"You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don't look like yourself," he said to Ivan.
"Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.,
"But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow.
Are you so worried?"
He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.
"Listen; I've told you I won't go away without an answer!" Ivan cried, intensely irritated.
"Why do you keep pestering me?
Why do you torment me?" said Smerdyakov, with a look of suffering.
"Damn it!
I've nothing to do with you.
Just answer my question and I'll go away."
"I've no answer to give you," said Smerdyakov, looking down again.
"You may be sure I'll make you answer!"
"Why are you so uneasy?" Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with contempt, but almost with repulsion. "Is this because the trial begins to-morrow?
Nothing will happen to you; can't you believe that at last?
Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don't be afraid of anything."
"I don't understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?" Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear did in fact pass over his soul.
Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.
"You don't understand?" he drawled reproachfully. "It's a strange thing a sensible man should care to play such a farce!"
Ivan looked at him speechless.
The startling, incredibly supercilious tone of this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in itself.
He had not taken such a tone even at their last interview.
"I tell you, you've nothing to be afraid of.
I won't say anything about you; there's no proof against you.
I say, how your hands are trembling!
Why are your fingers moving like that?
Go home, you did not murder him."
Ivan started. He remembered Alyosha.
"I know it was not I," he faltered.
"Do you?" Smerdyakov caught him up again.
Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.
"Tell me everything, you viper!
Tell me everything!"
Smerdyakov was not in the least scared.
He only riveted his eyes on Ivan with insane hatred.
"Well, it was you who murdered him, if that's it," he whispered furiously.
Ivan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something.
He laughed malignantly.
"You mean my going away.
What you talked about last time?"
"You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you understand it now."
"All I understand is that you are mad."
"Aren't you tired of it?
Here we are face to face; what's the use of going on keeping up a farce to each other?
Are you still trying to throw it all on me, to my face?
You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your words I did it."
"Did it?
Why, did you murder him?" Ivan turned cold.
Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over with a cold shiver.
Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly; probably the genuineness of Ivan's horror struck him.