"Because I know everything, everything, that's why I spoke like that!
I know that, six months ago, you offered her your hand in front of everybody.
Don't interrupt, you can see I'm speaking without commentaries.
After that she ran away with Rogozhin; then you lived with her in some village or town, and she left you for someone else." (Aglaya blushed terribly.) "Then she went back to Rogozhin, who loves her like . . . like a madman.
Then you, who are also a very intelligent man, came galloping after her here, as soon as you learned she was back in Petersburg.
Yesterday evening you rushed to her defense, and just now you saw her in a dream . . . You see, I know everything; isn't it for her, for her, that you came here?"
"Yes, for her," the prince replied softly, bowing his head sadly and pensively, and not suspecting with what flashing eyes Aglaya glanced at him, "for her, just to find out... I don't believe she can be happy with Rogozhin, though ... in short, I don't know what I could do for her here and how I could help, but I came."
He gave a start and looked at Aglaya; she was listening to him with hatred.
"If you came without knowing why, you must love her very much," she said at last.
"No," replied the prince, "no, I don't love her.
Oh, if you knew with what horror I remember the time I spent with her!"
A shudder even went through his body at these words.
"Tell me everything," said Aglaya.
"There's nothing in it that you shouldn't hear.
Why it is precisely you that I wanted to tell it to, and you alone—I don't know; maybe because I indeed loved you very much.
This unfortunate woman is deeply convinced that she is the most fallen, the most depraved being in all the world.
Oh, don't disgrace her, don't cast a stone.24 She has tormented herself all too much with the awareness of her undeserved disgrace!
And what is she guilty of, oh my God!
Oh, in her frenzy she cries constantly that she does not acknowledge her guilt, that she is the victim of people, the victim of a debaucher and a villain; but whatever she tells you, know that she is the first not to believe it herself and that, on the contrary, she believes with all her conscience that she herself ... is the guilty one.
When I tried to dispel this darkness, her suffering reached such a degree that my heart will never be healed as long as I remember that terrible time.
It's as if my heart was pierced through forever.
She ran away from me, and do you know why?
Precisely to prove to me alone that she is base.
But the most terrible thing here is that she herself may not have known that she wanted to prove it to me alone, but ran away because inwardly she felt she absolutely had to do something disgraceful, in order to tell herself then and there: 'So now you've committed some new disgrace, that means you're a base creature!'
Oh, perhaps you won't understand this, Aglaya!
You know, there may be some terrible, unnatural pleasure for her in this constant awareness of disgrace, a sort of revenge on someone.
Sometimes I managed to bring her to a point where she seemed to see light around her; but she would become indignant at once and go so far as to reproach me bitterly for putting myself far above her (when it never entered my mind), and she finally told me straight out, in response to my proposal of marriage, that she asked no one for supercilious compassion, or for help, or to be 'raised up to his level.'
You saw her yesterday; do you really think she's happy with that company, that it's her kind of society?
You don't know how developed she is and what she can understand!
She even surprised me sometimes!"
"And did you also preach her such . . . sermons?"
"Oh, no," the prince went on pensively, not noticing the tone of the question, "I was silent most of the time.
I often wanted to speak, but I really didn't know what to say.
You know, on certain occasions it's better not to speak at all.
Oh, I loved her; oh, I loved her very much . . . but then . . . then . . . then she guessed everything."
"What did she guess?"
"That I only pitied her and ... no longer loved her."
"How do you know, maybe she really fell in love with that . . . landowner she went off with?"
"No, I know everything; she only laughed at him."
"And did she ever laugh at you?"
"N-no.
She laughed out of spite; oh, she reproached me terribly then, in anger—and suffered herself!
But . . . then . . . oh, don't remind me, don't remind me of it!"
He covered his face with his hands.
"And do you know that she writes me letters almost every day?"
"So it's true!" the prince cried in anxiety. "I heard it, but I still didn't want to believe it."
"Who did you hear it from?" Aglaya roused herself fearfully.
"Rogozhin told me yesterday, only not quite clearly."
"Yesterday?
Yesterday morning?