'I'm you-know-what,' she says.
To this day she maintains it herself.
She says it all right in my face.
She's afraid to ruin and disgrace you, but me she can marry, meaning it doesn't matter— that's how she considers me, note that as well!"
"But why, then, did she run away from you to me, and . . . from me . . .
"And from you to me!
Heh!
All sorts of things suddenly come into her head!
She's all like in a fever now.
One day she shouts to me: 'I'll marry you like drowning myself.
Be quick with the wedding!'
She hurries herself, fixes the date, and when the time is near—she gets frightened, or has other ideas—God knows, but you've seen her: she cries, laughs, thrashes around feverishly.
What's so strange that she ran away from you, too?
She ran away from you then, because she suddenly realized how much she loves you.
It was beyond her to be with you.
You just said I sought her out then in Moscow; that's not so—she came running to me herself: 'Fix the day,' she says, 'I'm ready!
Pour the champagne!
We'll go to the gypsies!' she shouts! ...
If it wasn't for me, she'd have drowned herself long ago; it's right what I'm saying.
The reason she doesn't do it is maybe because I'm even scarier than the water.
So she wants to marry me out of spite ... If she does it, believe me, she'll be doing it out of spite."
"But how can you . . . how can you! . . ." the prince cried and did not finish.
He looked at Rogozhin with horror.
"Why don't you finish?" the other added with a grin. "But if you like, I'll tell you how you're reasoning at this very moment: 'So how can she be with him now?
How can she be allowed to do it?'
I know what you think . . ."
"I didn't come for that, Parfyon, I'm telling you, that's not what I had in mind . . ."
"Maybe it wasn't for that and that wasn't on your mind, only now it's certainly become that, heh, heh!
Well, enough!
Why are you all overturned like that?
You mean you really didn't know?
You amaze me!"
"This is all jealousy, Parfyon, it's all illness, you exaggerate it beyond all measure . . ." the prince murmured in great agitation. "What's the matter?"
"Let it alone," Parfyon said and quickly snatched from the prince's hand the little knife he had picked up from the table, next to the book, and put it back where it had been.
"It's as if I knew, when I was coming to Petersburg, as if I had a foreboding . . ." the prince went on. "I didn't want to come here!
I wanted to forget everything here, to tear it out of my heart!
Well, good-bye . . . But what's the matter?"
As he was talking, the prince had again absentmindedly picked up the same knife from the table, and again Rogozhin had taken it from him and dropped it on the table.
It was a knife of a rather simple form, with a staghorn handle, not a folding one, with a blade six inches long and of a corresponding width.
Seeing that the prince paid particular attention to the fact that this knife had twice been snatched away from him, Rogozhin seized it in angry vexation, put it in the book, and flung the book onto the other table.
"Do you cut the pages with it?" asked the prince, but somehow absentmindedly, still as if under the pressure of a deep pensiveness.
"Yes, the pages . . ."
"Isn't it a garden knife?"
"Yes, it is.
Can't you cut pages with a garden knife?"
"But it's . . . brand-new."
"Well, what if it is new?
So now I can't buy a new knife?" Rogozhin, who was getting more and more vexed with every word, finally cried out in a sort of frenzy.
The prince gave a start and gazed intently at Rogozhin.
"Look at us!" he suddenly laughed, recovering himself completely.