Page 338 - the-idiot

tinctly. Oh, miserable coward that I am!’ The prince flushed
with shame for his own baseness. ‘How shall I ever look this
man in the face again? My God, what a day! And what a
nightmare, what a nightmare!’
There was a moment, during this long, wretched walk
back from the Petersburg Side, when the prince felt an ir-
resistible desire to go straight to Rogojin’s, wait for him,
embrace him with tears of shame and contrition, and tell
him of his distrust, and finish with it—once for all.
But here he was back at his hotel.
How often during the day he had thought of this hotel
with loathing—its corridor, its rooms, its stairs. How he had
dreaded coming back to it, for some reason.
‘What a regular old woman I am today,’ he had said to
himself each time, with annoyance. ‘I believe in every fool-
ish presentiment that comes into my head.’
He stopped for a moment at the door; a great flush of
shame came over him. ‘I am a coward, a wretched cow-
ard,’ he said, and moved forward again; but once more he
paused.
Among all the incidents of the day, one recurred to his
mind to the exclusion of the rest; although now that his
self-control was regained, and he was no longer under the
influence of a nightmare, he was able to think of it calmly.
It concerned the knife on Rogojin’s table. ‘Why should not
Rogojin have as many knives on his table as he chooses?’
thought the prince, wondering at his suspicions, as he had
done when he found himself looking into the cutler’s win-
dow. ‘What could it have to do with me?’ he said to himself