When he had finished he was evidently agitated and was breathing hard. The perspiration stood out on his face. But it was impossible to tell whether it was remorse he was feeling, or what.
“Stay,” cried Ivan, pondering. “What about the door? If he only opened the door to you, how could Grigory have seen it open before? For Grigory saw it before you went.”
It was remarkable that Ivan spoke quite amicably, in a different tone, not angry as before, so if anyone had opened the door at that moment and peeped in at them, he would certainly have concluded that they were talking peaceably about some ordinary, though interesting, subject.
“As for that door and Grigory Vassilyevitch’s having seen it open, that’s only his fancy,” said Smerdyakov, with a wry smile. “He is not a man, I assure you, but an obstinate mule. He didn’t see it, but fancied he had seen it, and there’s no shaking him. It’s just our luck he took that notion into his head, for they can’t fail to convict Dmitri Fyodorovitch after that.”
“Listen …” said Ivan, beginning to seem bewildered again and making an effort to grasp something.
“Listen. There are a lot of questions I want to ask you, but I forget them … I keep forgetting and getting mixed up. Yes. Tell me this at least, why did you open the envelope and leave it there on the floor? Why didn’t you simply carry off the envelope? … When you were telling me, I thought you spoke about it as though it were the right thing to do … but why, I can’t understand. …”
“I did that for a good reason. For if a man had known all about it, as I did for instance, if he’d seen those notes