izaveta Nikolaevna to-morrow; shall I? No?
Why don't you answer? Tell me what you want. I'll do it. Listen. I'll
let you have Shatov. Shall I?"

"Then it's true that you meant to kill him?" cried Stavrogin.

"What do you want with Shatov? What is he to you?" Pyotr Stepanovitch
went on, gasping, speaking rapidly. He was in a frenzy, and kept running
forward and seizing Stavrogin by the elbow, probably unaware of what he
was doing. "Listen. I'll let you have him. Let's make it up. Your price
is a very great one, but... Let's make it up!"

Stavrogin glanced at him at last, and was amazed. The eyes, the voice,
were not the same as always, or as they had been in the room just now.
What he saw was almost another face. The intonation of the voice was
different. Verhovensky besought, implored. He was a man from whom what
was most precious was being taken or had been taken, and who was still
stunned by the shock.

"But what's the matter with you?" cried Stavrogin. The other did not
answer, but ran after him and gazed at him with the same imploring but
yet inflexible expression.

"Let's make it up!" he whispered once more. "Listen. Like Fedka, I have
a knife in my boot, but I'll make it up with you!"

"But what do you want with me, damn you?" Stavrogin cried, with intense
anger and amazement. "Is there some mystery about it? Am I a sort of
talisman for you?"

"Listen. We are going to make a revolution," the other muttered rapidly,
and almost in delirium. "You don't believe we shall make a revolution?
We are going to make such an upheaval that everything will be uprooted
from its foundation. Karmazinov is right that there is nothing to lay
hold of. Karmazinov is very intelligent. Another ten such groups in
different parts of Russia--and I am safe."

"Groups of fools like that?" broke reluctantly from Stavrogin.

"Oh, don't be so clever, Stavrogin; don't be so clever yourself. And you
know you are by no means so intelligent that you need wish others to
be. You are afraid, you have no faith. You are frightened at our doing
things on such a scale. And why are they fools? They are not such fools.
No one has a mind of his own nowadays. There are terribly few original
minds nowadays. Virginsky is a pure-hearted man, ten times as pure as
you or I; but never mind about him. Liputin is a rogue, but I know one
point about him. Every rogue has some point in him.... Lyamshin is the
only one who hasn't, but he is in my hands. A few m