"Then why didn't you ask for me in my room ... if you were at the inn?" the prince asked suddenly.
Rogozhin stopped, looked at him, thought, and, as if not understanding the question at all, said:
"So, now, Lev Nikolaevich, you go straight on here, right to the house, you know?
And I'll go along the other side.
And watch out that we keep together ..."
Having said this, he crossed the street, stepped onto the opposite sidewalk, looked whether the prince was following, and seeing that he was standing and staring at him, waved his hand in the direction of Gorokhovaya and went on, constantly turning to look at the prince and beckoning to him to follow.
He was obviously heartened to see that the prince had understood him and did not cross the street to join him.
It occurred to the prince that Rogozhin had to keep an eye out for someone and not miss him on the way, and that that was why he had crossed to the other side.
"Only why didn't he tell me who to look for?"
They went some five hundred paces that way, and suddenly the prince began to tremble for some reason; Rogozhin still kept looking back, though more rarely; the prince could not help himself and beckoned to him with his hand.
The man at once came across the street to him.
"Is Nastasya Filippovna at your house?"
"Yes."
"And was it you who looked at me from behind the curtain earlier?"
"It was . . ."
"Then why did you . . ."
But the prince did not know what to ask further and how to finish the question; besides, his heart was pounding so hard that it was difficult for him even to speak.
Rogozhin was also silent and looked at him as before, that is, as if pensively.
"Well, I'm going," he said suddenly, preparing to cross the street again, "and you go, too.
Let's stay separated in the street . . . it's better for us that way ... on different sides . . . you'll see."
When they finally turned from two different sidewalks onto Gorokhovaya and approached Rogozhin's house, the prince's legs again began to give way under him, so that he had difficulty walking.
It was nearly ten o'clock in the evening.
The windows on the old lady's side were open as before, Rogozhin's were closed, and the drawn white blinds seemed to have become still more noticeable in the twilight.
The prince came up to the house from the opposite sidewalk; Rogozhin stepped onto the porch from his sidewalk and waved his hand to him.
The prince went up to him on the porch.
"Even the caretaker doesn't know about me now, that I've come back home.
I told him earlier that I was going to Pavlovsk, and I said the same thing at my mother's," he whispered with a sly and almost contented smile. "We'll go in and nobody'll hear."
He already had the key in his hand.
Going up the stairs, he turned and shook his finger at the prince to step more quietly, quietly opened the door to his rooms, let the prince in, carefully came in after him, locked the door behind him, and put the key in his pocket.
"Let's go," he said in a whisper.
He had begun speaking in a whisper still on the sidewalk in Liteinaya.
Despite all his external calm, he was in some deep inner anguish.
When they entered the big room, just before his study, he went up to the window and beckoned mysteriously to the prince:
"So when you rang my bell earlier, I guessed straight off that it was you all right; I tiptoed to the door and heard you talking with Pafnutyevna, and I'd already been telling her at dawn: if you, or somebody from you, or anybody else starts knocking at my door, she shouldn't tell about me under any pretext; and especially if you came asking for me yourself, and I told her your name.
And then, when you left, it occurred to me: what if he's standing there now and spying on me, or watching from the street?
I went up to this same window, raised the curtain a bit, looked, and you were standing there looking straight at me . . . That's how it was."
"And where is . . . Nastasya Filippovna?" the prince brought out breathlessly.
"She's . . . here," Rogozhin said slowly, as if waiting a bit before he answered.
"But where?"
Rogozhin raised his eyes to the prince and looked at him intently:
Let's go . . .
He kept speaking in a whisper and without hurrying, slowly and, as before, with some strange pensiveness.
Even when he was telling about the curtain, it was as if he wanted to express something different with his story, despite all the expansiveness of the telling.
They went into the study.
A certain change had taken place in this room since the prince had been there: a green silk damask curtain was stretched across the whole room, with openings at both ends, separating the study from the alcove in which Rogozhin's bed was set up.
The heavy curtain was drawn and the openings were closed.
But it was very dark in the room; the Petersburg "white" summer nights were beginning to turn darker, and if it had not been for the full moon, it would have been difficult to see anything in Rogozhin's dark rooms with the blinds drawn.
True, it was still possible to make out faces, though not very clearly.
Rogozhin's face was very pale, as usual; his eyes looked intently at the prince, with a strong gleam, but somehow motionlessly.
"Why don't you light a candle?" asked the prince.