am sure you can read between the lines, and is
this the time for petty vanity? Haven't you satisfaction enough? Must I
really dot my i's and go into it all? Very well, I will dot my i's, if
you are so anxious for my humiliation. I have no right, it's impossible
for me to be authorised; Lizaveta Nikolaevna knows nothing about it
and her betrothed has finally lost his senses and is only fit for a
madhouse, and, to crown everything, has come to tell you so himself. You
are the only man in the world who can make her happy, and I am the one
to make her unhappy. You are trying to get her, you are pursuing her,
but--I don't know why--you won't marry her. If it's because of a lovers'
quarrel abroad and I must be sacrificed to end it, sacrifice me. She is
too unhappy and I can't endure it. My words are not a sanction, not a
prescription, and so it's no slur on your pride. If you care to take
my place at the altar, you can do it without any sanction from me, and
there is no ground for me to come to you with a mad proposal, especially
as our marriage is utterly impossible after the step I am taking now. I
cannot lead her to the altar feeling myself an abject wretch. What I am
doing here and my handing her over to you, perhaps her bitterest foe, is
to my mind something so abject that I shall never get over it."

"Will you shoot yourself on our wedding day?"

"No, much later. Why stain her bridal dress with my blood? Perhaps I
shall not shoot myself at all, either now or later."

"I suppose you want to comfort me by saying that?"

"You? What would the blood of one more mean to you?" He turned pale and
his eyes gleamed. A minute of silence followed.

"Excuse me for the questions I've asked you," Stavrogin began again;
"some of them I had no business to ask you, but one of them I think I
have every right to put to you. Tell me, what facts have led you to
form a conclusion as to my feelings for Lizaveta Nikolaevna? I mean to
a conviction of a degree of feeling on my part as would justify your
coming here... and risking such a proposal."

"What?" Mavriky Nikolaevitch positively started. "Haven't you been
trying to win her? Aren't you trying to win her, and don't you want to
win her?"

"Generally speaking, I can't speak of my feeling for this woman or that
to a third person or to anyone except the woman herself. You must excuse
it, it's a constitutional peculiarity. But to make up for it, I'll tell
you the truth about everything e