Page 314 - the-idiot

you were thinking to yourself just then? You were thinking,
‘How can she marry him after this? How can it possibly be
permitted?’ Oh, I know what you were thinking about!’
‘I didn’t come here for that purpose, Parfen. That was 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, exces-
sively 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 alto-
gether! 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 plainlooking 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.

1