op the foolish
girl; that was not in your power. I quite see so much; but you really
should have understood how seriously she cared for you. She could not
bear to share you with another; and you could bring yourself to throw
away and shatter such a treasure! Oh, prince, prince!"

"Yes, yes, you are quite right again," said the poor prince, in anguish
of mind. "I was wrong, I know. But it was only Aglaya who looked on
Nastasia Philipovna so; no one else did, you know."

"But that's just the worst of it all, don't you see, that there was
absolutely nothing serious about the matter in reality!" cried Evgenie,
beside himself: "Excuse me, prince, but I have thought over all this; I
have thought a great deal over it; I know all that had happened before;
I know all that took place six months since; and I know there was
NOTHING serious about the matter, it was but fancy, smoke, fantasy,
distorted by agitation, and only the alarmed jealousy of an absolutely
inexperienced girl could possibly have mistaken it for serious reality."

Here Evgenie Pavlovitch quite let himself go, and gave the reins to his
indignation.

Clearly and reasonably, and with great psychological insight, he drew a
picture of the prince's past relations with Nastasia Philipovna.
Evgenie Pavlovitch always had a ready tongue, but on this occasion his
eloquence, surprised himself. "From the very beginning," he said, "you
began with a lie; what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie;
such is the law of nature. I do not agree, in fact I am angry, when I
hear you called an idiot; you are far too intelligent to deserve such
an epithet; but you are so far STRANGE as to be unlike others; that you
must allow, yourself. Now, I have come to the conclusion that the basis
of all that has happened, has been first of all your innate inexperience
(remark the expression 'innate,' prince). Then follows your unheard-of
simplicity of heart; then comes your absolute want of sense of
proportion (to this want you have several times confessed); and lastly,
a mass, an accumulation, of intellectual convictions which you, in your
unexampled honesty of soul, accept unquestionably as also innate and
natural and true. Admit, prince, that in your relations with Nastasia
Philipovna there has existed, from the very first, something democratic,
and the fascination, so to speak, of the 'woman question'? I know all
about that scandalous scene at Nastasia Philipovna's house when Rogojin