Page 336 - the-idiot

his soul oppressed with a cold gloom? Was it because he
had just seen these dreadful eyes again? Why, he had left
the Summer Garden on purpose to see them; that had been
his ‘idea.’ He had wished to assure himself that he would
see them once more at that house. Then why was he so
overwhelmed now, having seen them as he expected? just
as though he had not expected to see them! Yes, they were
the very same eyes; and no doubt about it. The same that
he had seen in the crowd that morning at the station, the
same that he had surprised in Rogojin’s rooms some hours
later, when the latter had replied to his inquiry with a sneer-
ing laugh, ‘Well, whose eyes were they?’ Then for the third
time they had appeared just as he was getting into the train
on his way to see Aglaya. He had had a strong impulse to
rush up to Rogojin, and repeat his words of the morning
‘Whose eyes are they?’ Instead he had fled from the station,
and knew nothing more, until he found himself gazing into
the window of a cutler’s shop, and wondering if a knife with
a staghorn handle would cost more than sixty copecks. And
as the prince sat dreaming in the Summer Garden under
a lime-tree, a wicked demon had come and whispered in
his car: ‘Rogojin has been spying upon you and watching
you all the morning in a frenzy of desperation. When he
finds you have not gone to Pavlofsk—a terrible discovery for
him—he will surely go at once to that house in Petersburg
Side, and watch for you there, although only this morning
you gave your word of honour not to see HER, and swore
that you had not come to Petersburg for that purpose.’ And
thereupon the prince had hastened off to that house, and