But I don’t want to lie to you now, because … because if you really haven’t understood till now, as I see for myself, and are not pretending, so as to throw your guilt on me to my very face, you are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the murder and charged me to do it, and went away knowing all about it. And so I want to prove to your face this evening that you are the only real murderer in the whole affair, and I am not the real murderer, though I did kill him. You are the rightful murderer.”
“Why, why, am I a murderer? Oh, God!” Ivan cried, unable to restrain himself at last, and forgetting that he had put off discussing himself till the end of the conversation.
“You still mean that Tchermashnya? Stay, tell me, why did you want my consent, if you really took Tchermashnya for consent? How will you explain that now?”
“Assured of your consent, I should have known that you wouldn’t have made an outcry over those three thousand being lost, even if I’d been suspected, instead of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or as his accomplice; on the contrary, you would have protected me from others. … And when you got your inheritance you would have rewarded me when you were able, all the rest of your life. For you’d have received your inheritance through me, seeing that if he had married Agrafena Alexandrovna, you wouldn’t have had a farthing.”
“Ah! Then you intended to worry me all my life afterwards,” snarled Ivan. “And what if I hadn’t gone away then, but had informed against you?”
“What could you have informed? That I persuaded you to go to Tchermashnya? That’s all nonsense. Besides, after our conversation you would either have gone away