Suddenly he seemed to check himself. He stood still and seemed to reflect. A strange grin contorted his lips.
“Brother,” Alyosha began again, in a shaking voice, “I have said this to you, because you’ll believe my word, I know that. I tell you once and for all, it’s not you. You hear, once for all! God has put it into my heart to say this to you, even though it may make you hate me from this hour.”
But by now Ivan had apparently regained his self-control.
“Alexey Fyodorovitch,” he said, with a cold smile, “I can’t endure prophets and epileptics—messengers from God especially—and you know that only too well. I break off all relations with you from this moment and probably forever. I beg you to leave me at this turning. It’s the way to your lodgings, too. You’d better be particularly careful not to come to me today! Do you hear?”
He turned and walked on with a firm step, not looking back.
“Brother,” Alyosha called after him, “if anything happens to you today, turn to me before anyone!”
But Ivan made no reply. Alyosha stood under the lamppost at the cross roads, till Ivan had vanished into the darkness. Then he turned and walked slowly homewards. Both Alyosha and Ivan were living in lodgings; neither of them was willing to live in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s empty house. Alyosha had a furnished room in the house of some working people. Ivan lived some distance from him. He had taken a roomy and fairly comfortable lodge attached to a fine house that belonged to a well-to-do lady, the widow of an official. But his only attendant was a deaf and rheumatic old crone who went to bed at six o’clock every evening and got up at six in the morning. Ivan had become remarkably indifferent to his comforts of late, and very fond of being alone. He did everything for himself in the one room he lived in, and rarely entered any of the other rooms in his abode.