t let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?"

"Why, I'd quite forgotten about her," said Smerdyakov, with a scornful
smile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him with a look of
frenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him at their last
interview, a month before.

"You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don't look like
yourself," he said to Ivan.

"Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you."

"But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you so
worried?" He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.

"Listen; I've told you I won't go away without an answer!" Ivan cried,
intensely irritated.

"Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?" said Smerdyakov,
with a look of suffering.

"Damn it! I've nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and I'll go
away."

"I've no answer to give you," said Smerdyakov, looking down again.

"You may be sure I'll make you answer!"

"Why are you so uneasy?" Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with
contempt, but almost with repulsion. "Is this because the trial begins
to-morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can't you believe that at last? Go
home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don't be afraid of anything."

"I don't understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?" Ivan
articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear did in
fact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.

"You don't understand?" he drawled reproachfully. "It's a strange thing a
sensible man should care to play such a farce!"

Ivan looked at him speechless. The startling, incredibly supercilious tone
of this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in itself. He
had not taken such a tone even at their last interview.

"I tell you, you've nothing to be afraid of. I won't say anything about
you; there's no proof against you. I say, how your hands are trembling!
Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home, _you_ did not murder him."

Ivan started. He remembered Alyosha.

"I know it was not I," he faltered.

"Do you?" Smerdyakov caught him up again.

Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.

"Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!"

Smerdyakov was not in the least scared. He only riveted his eyes on Ivan
with insane hatred.

"Well, it was you who murdered him, if that's it," he whispered furiously.

Ivan sank back on his chair, as though ponderi