Page 1024 - the-brothers-karamazov

Ivan suddenly fired up.
‘How could I have said it more directly then? It was sim-
ply my fear that made me speak, and you might have been
angry, too. I might well have been apprehensive that Dmi-
tri Fyodorovitch would make a scene and carry away that
money, for he considered it as good as his own; but who
could tell that it would end in a murder like this? I thought
that he would only carry off the three thousand that lay un-
der the master’s mattress in the envelope, and you see, he’s
murdered him. How could you guess it either, sir?’
‘But if you say yourself that it couldn’t be guessed, how
could I have guessed and stayed at home? You contradict
yourself!’ said Ivan, pondering.
‘You might have guessed from my sending you to Tcher-
mashnya and not to Moscow.’
‘How could I guess it from that?’
Smerdyakov seemed much exhausted, and again he was
silent for a minute.
‘You might have guessed from the fact of my asking you
not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya, that I wanted
to have you nearer, for Moscow’s a long way off, and Dmi-
tri Fyodorovitch, knowing you are not far off, would not
be so bold. And if anything had happened, you might have
come to protect me, too, for I warned you of Grigory Vassi-
lyevitch’s illness, and that I was afraid of having a fit. And
when I explained those knocks to you, by means of which
one could go in to the deceased, and that Dmitri Fyodoro-
vitch knew them all through me, I thought that you would
guess yourself that he would be sure to do something, and

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