g ready to seize every opportunity in the future to show my
gratitude.' Well, what do you say to that?"

"You have... so amazed me..." faltered Stepan Trofimovitch, "that I
don't believe you."

"Yes, observe, observe," cried Liputin, as though he had not heard
Stepan Trofimovitch, "observe what must be her agitation and uneasiness
if she stoops from her grandeur to appeal to a man like me, and even
condescends to beg me to keep it secret. What do you call that?
Hasn't she received some news of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, something
unexpected?"

"I don't know... of news of any sort... I haven't seen her for some
days, but... but I must say..." lisped Stepan Trofimovitch, evidently
hardly able to think clearly, "but I must say, Liputin, that if it
was said to you in confidence, and here you're telling it before every
one..."

"Absolutely in confidence! But God strike me dead if I... But as for
telling it here... what does it matter? Are we strangers, even Alexey
Nilitch?"

"I don't share that attitude. No doubt we three here will keep the
secret, but I'm afraid of the fourth, you, and wouldn't trust you in
anything...."

"What do you mean by that? Why it's more to my interest than anyone's,
seeing I was promised eternal gratitude! What I wanted was to point
out in this connection one extremely strange incident, rather to
say, psychological than simply strange. Yesterday evening, under the
influence of my conversation with Varvara Petrovna--you can fancy
yourself what an impression it made on me--I approached Alexey Nilitch
with a discreet question: 'You knew Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch abroad,'
said I, 'and used to know him before in Petersburg too. What do you
think of his mind and his abilities?' said I. He answered laconically,
as his way is, that he was a man of subtle intellect and sound judgment.
'And have you never noticed in the course of years,' said I, 'any
turn of ideas or peculiar way of looking at things, or any, so to say,
insanity?' In fact, I repeated Varvara Petrovna's own question. And
would you believe it, Alexey Nilitch suddenly grew thoughtful, and
scowled, just as he's doing now. 'Yes,' said he, 'I have sometimes
thought there was something strange.' Take note, too, that if anything
could have seemed strange even to Alexey Nilitch, it must really have
been something, mustn't it?"

"Is that true?" said Stepan Trofimovitch, turning to Alexey Nilitch.

"I should prefer not to speak of it," answered