"Perhaps no one will believe the baseness of such an intention to be
possible. It's certain that, when we parted that morning, I gloated
over it. I brooded upon the best way. The old man you introduced me to
insisted on walking with me. I don't know who he is. He talked of you,
of your lonely, helpless state, and every word of that friend of yours
was egging me on to the unpardonable sin of stealing a soul. Could he
have been the devil himself in the shape of an old Englishman? Natalia
Victorovna, I was possessed! I returned to look at you every day,
and drink in your presence the poison of my infamous intention. But
I foresaw difficulties. Then Sophia Antonovna, of whom I was not
thinking--I had forgotten her existence--appears suddenly with that
tale from St. Petersburg.... The only thing needed to make me safe--a
trusted revolutionist for ever.
"It was as if Ziemianitch had hanged himself to help me on to further
crime. The strength of falsehood seemed irresistible. These people
stood doomed by the folly and the illusion that was in them--they being
themselves the slaves of lies. Natalia Victorovna, I embraced the might
of falsehood, I exulted in it--I gave myself up to it for a time. Who
could have resisted! You yourself were the prize of it. I sat alone in
my room, planning a life, the very thought of which makes me shudder
now, like a believer who had been tempted to an atrocious sacrilege.
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