“Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?”
“I’m not a doctor. I couldn’t decide. I ran away thinking I’d killed him. And now he’s recovered.”
“Excellent,” commented the prosecutor. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted. Kindly proceed.”
Alas! it never entered Mitya’s head to tell them, though he remembered it, that he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate figure had even uttered some words of regret: “You’ve come to grief, old man—there’s no help for it. Well, there you must lie.”
The prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped back “at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of ascertaining whether the only witness of his crime were dead; that he must therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision and foresight even at such a moment,” … and so on. The prosecutor was satisfied: “I’ve provoked the nervous fellow by ‘trifles’ and he has said more than he meant to.”
With painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up immediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands so covered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?”
“Why, I didn’t notice the blood at all at the time,” answered Mitya.
“That’s quite likely. It does happen sometimes.” The prosecutor exchanged glances with Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“I simply didn’t notice. You’re quite right there, prosecutor,” Mitya assented suddenly.