pistols. And I particularly beg you to arrange to fix
the barriers at ten paces apart; then you put each of us ten paces from
the barrier, and at a given signal we approach. Each must go right up to
his barrier, but you may fire before, on the way. I believe that's all."

"Ten paces between the barriers is very near," observed Kirillov.

"Well, twelve then, but not more. You understand that he wants to fight
in earnest. Do you know how to load a pistol?"

"I do. I've got pistols. I'll give my word that you've never fired
them. His second will give his word about his. There'll be two pairs of
pistols, and we'll toss up, his or ours?"

"Excellent."

"Would you like to look at the pistols?"

"Very well."

Kirillov squatted on his heels before the trunk in the corner, which
he had never yet unpacked, though things had been pulled out of it as
required. He pulled out from the bottom a palm-wood box lined with red
velvet, and from it took out a pair of smart and very expensive pistols.

"I've got everything, powder, bullets, cartridges. I've a revolver
besides, wait."

He stooped down to the trunk again and took out a six-chambered American
revolver.

"You've got weapons enough, and very good ones."

"Very, extremely."

Kirillov, who was poor, almost destitute, though he never noticed his
poverty, was evidently proud of showing precious weapons, which he had
certainly obtained with great sacrifice.

"You still have the same intentions?" Stavrogin asked after a moment's
silence, and with a certain wariness.

"Yes," answered Kirillov shortly, guessing at once from his voice what
he was asking about, and he began taking the weapons from the table.

"When?" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch inquired still more cautiously, after a
pause.

In the meantime Kirillov had put both the boxes back in his trunk, and
sat down in his place again.

"That doesn't depend on me, as you know--when they tell me," he
muttered, as though disliking the question; but at the same time with
evident readiness to answer any other question. He kept his black,
lustreless eyes fixed continually on Stavrogin with a calm but warm and
kindly expression in them.

"I understand shooting oneself, of course," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
began suddenly, frowning a little, after a dreamy silence that lasted
three minutes. "I sometimes have thought of it myself, and then there
always came a new idea: if one did something wicked, or, worse still,
something s