ng a hair--especially as you are not to blame for them; not in the
least, are you? She will only keep them in reserve to use them against
you when you've been married two or three years. Every woman saves up
something of the sort out of her husband's past when she gets married,
but by that time... what may not happen in a year? Ha ha!"

"If you've come in a racing droshky, take her to Mavriky Nikolaevitch
now. She said just now that she could not endure me and would leave me,
and she certainly will not accept my carriage."

"What! Can she really be leaving? How can this have come about?" said
Pyotr Stepanovitch, staring stupidly at him.

"She's guessed somehow during this night that I don't love her... which
she knew all along, indeed."

"But don't you love her?" said Pyotr Stepanovitch, with an expression
of extreme surprise. "If so, why did you keep her when she came to you
yesterday, instead of telling her plainly like an honourable man that
you didn't care for her? That was horribly shabby on your part; and how
mean you make me look in her eyes!"

Stavrogin suddenly laughed.

"I am laughing at my monkey," he explained at once.

"Ah! You saw that I was putting it on!" cried Pyotr Stepanovitch,
laughing too, with great enjoyment. "I did it to amuse you! Only fancy,
as soon as you came out to me I guessed from your face that you'd been
'unlucky.' A complete fiasco, perhaps. Eh? There! I'll bet anything,"
he cried, almost gasping with delight, "that you've been sitting side by
side in the drawing-room all night wasting your precious time discussing
something lofty and elevated... There, forgive me, forgive me; it's not
my business. I felt sure yesterday that it would all end in foolishness.
I brought her to you simply to amuse you, and to show you that you
wouldn't have a dull time with me. I shall be of use to you a hundred
times in that way. I always like pleasing people. If you don't want her
now, which was what I was reckoning on when I came, then..."

"So you brought her simply for my amusement?"

"Why, what else?"

"Not to make me kill my wife?"

"Come. You've not killed her? What a tragic fellow you are!

"It's just the same; you killed her."

"I didn't kill her! I tell you I had no hand in it.... You are beginning
to make me uneasy, though...."

"Go on. You said, 'if you don't want her now, then... '"

"Then, leave it to me, of course. I can quite easily marry her off to
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, t