s not in my mind--"

"That may be! Perhaps you didn't COME with the idea, but the idea is
certainly there NOW! Ha, ha! well, that's enough! What are you upset
about? Didn't you really know it all before? You astonish me!"

"All this is mere jealousy--it is some malady of yours, Parfen! You
exaggerate everything," said the prince, excessively agitated. "What are
you doing?"

"Let go of it!" said Parfen, seizing from the prince's hand a knife
which the latter had at that moment taken up from the table, where it
lay beside the history. Parfen replaced it where it had been.

"I seemed to know it--I felt it, when I was coming back to Petersburg,"
continued the prince, "I did not want to come, I wished to forget all
this, to uproot it from my memory altogether! Well, good-bye--what is
the matter?"

He had absently taken up the knife a second time, and again Rogojin
snatched it from his hand, and threw it down on the table. It was a
plain looking knife, with a bone handle, a blade about eight inches long,
and broad in proportion, it did not clasp.

Seeing that the prince was considerably struck by the fact that he had
twice seized this knife out of his hand, Rogojin caught it up with
some irritation, put it inside the book, and threw the latter across to
another table.

"Do you cut your pages with it, or what?" asked Muishkin, still rather
absently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which
the conversation had thrown him.

"Yes."

"It's a garden knife, isn't it?"

"Yes. Can't one cut pages with a garden knife?"

"It's quite new."

"Well, what of that? Can't I buy a new knife if I like?" shouted Rogojin
furiously, his irritation growing with every word.

The prince shuddered, and gazed fixedly at Parfen. Suddenly he burst out
laughing.

"Why, what an idea!" he said. "I didn't mean to ask you any of these
questions; I was thinking of something quite different! But my head is
heavy, and I seem so absent-minded nowadays! Well, good-bye--I can't
remember what I wanted to say--good-bye!"

"Not that way," said Rogojin.

"There, I've forgotten that too!"

"This way--come along--I'll show you."

IV.

THEY passed through the same rooms which the prince had traversed on his
arrival. In the largest there were pictures on the walls, portraits and
landscapes of little interest. Over the door, however, there was one of
strange and rather striking shape; it was six or seven feet in length,
and n