said menacingly. “And I don’t know myself yet. Perhaps you’ll want to trample me under foot after my examination tomorrow.”
“You will give your evidence honorably,” said Alyosha; “that’s all that’s wanted.”
“Women are often dishonorable,” she snarled. “Only an hour ago I was thinking I felt afraid to touch that monster … as though he were a reptile … but no, he is still a human being to me! But did he do it? Is he the murderer?” she cried, all of a sudden, hysterically, turning quickly to Ivan.
Alyosha saw at once that she had asked Ivan that question before, perhaps only a moment before he came in, and not for the first time, but for the hundredth, and that they had ended by quarreling.
“I’ve been to see Smerdyakov. … It was you, you who persuaded me that he murdered his father. It’s only you I believed!” she