can be done by crude,
simple coincidence--eh?"

"Are you threatening me, you fool?"

"Come, leave off, leave off! Here you are, calling me a fool, and what
a tone to use! You ought to be glad, yet you... I rushed here on purpose
to let you know in good time.... Besides, how could I threaten you?
As if I cared for what I could get by threats! I want you to help from
goodwill and not from fear. You are the light and the sun.... It's
I who am terribly afraid of you, not you of me! I am not Mavriky
Nikolaevitch.... And only fancy, as I flew here in a racing droshky I
saw Mavriky Nikolaevitch by the fence at the farthest corner of your
garden... in his greatcoat, drenched through, he must have been sitting
there all night! Queer goings on! How mad people can be!"

"Mavriky Nikolaevitch? Is that true?"

"Yes, yes. He is sitting by the garden fence. About three hundred paces
from here, I think. I made haste to pass him, but he saw me. Didn't you
know? In that case I am glad I didn't forget to tell you. A man like
that is more dangerous than anyone if he happens to have a revolver
about him, and then the night, the sleet, or natural irritability--for
after all he is in a nice position, ha ha! What do you think? Why is he
sitting there?"

"He is waiting for Lizaveta Nikolaevna, of course."

"Well! Why should she go out to him? And... in such rain too... what a
fool!"

"She is just going out to him!"

"Eh! That's a piece of news! So then... But listen, her position is
completely changed now. What does she want with Mavriky now? You
are free, a widower, and can marry her to-morrow. She doesn't know
yet--leave it to me and I'll arrange it all for you. Where is she? We
must relieve her mind too."

"Relieve her mind?"

"Rather! Let's go."

"And do you suppose she won't guess what those dead bodies mean?" said
Stavrogin, screwing up his eyes in a peculiar way.

"Of course she won't," said Pyotr Stepanovitch with all the confidence
of a perfect simpleton, "for legally... Ech, what a man you are! What
if she did guess? Women are so clever at shutting their eyes to such
things, you don't understand women! Apart from it's being altogether
to her interest to marry you now, because there's no denying she's
disgraced herself; apart from that, I talked to her of 'the boat' and I
saw that one could affect her by it, so that shows you what the girl is
made of. Don't be uneasy, she will step over those dead bodies without
turni