Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling himself, yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic, resentful and insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist passed before Ivan’s eyes for the first moment.

“How? What? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m perfectly in possession of all my faculties.”

“Do you suppose I knew of the murder?” Ivan cried at last, and he brought his fist violently on the table. “What do you mean by ‘something else, too’? Speak, scoundrel!”

Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent stare.

“Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that ‘something else, too’?”

“The ‘something else’ I meant was that you probably too were very desirous of your parent’s death.”

Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so that he fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed in tears. Saying, “It’s a shame, sir, to strike a sick man,” he dried his eyes with a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet weeping. A minute passed.

“That’s enough! Leave off,” Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again. “Don’t put me out of all patience.”

Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face reflected the insult he had just received.

“So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant to kill my father?”

“I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then,” said Smerdyakov resentfully; “and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that very point.”

“To sound what, what?”

“Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be murdered or not?”

What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent tone to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.

“It was you murdered him?” he cried suddenly.

Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.

“You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of it again.”

“But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?”

“As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a position, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly, too.”

“Look here, you didn’t say that a fortnight ago.”

“I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I though you’d understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible man you wouldn’t care to talk of it openly.”