“Do you want to know that as a supplement of what you have read? Very well. I killed in a state of aberration. Nowadays people even smoke and drink tea under the influence of aberration. In your excitement you have taken up my glass instead of your own, and you smoke more than usual.… Life is all aberration … so it appears to me.… When I went into the wood my thoughts were far away from murder; I went there with only one object: to find Olga and to continue to sting her.… When I am drunk I always feel the necessity to sting.… I met her about two hundred paces from the clearing.… She was standing under a tree and looking pensively at the sky.… I called to her.… When she saw me she smiled and stretched out her arms to me.…
“Don't scold me, I'm so unhappy!” she said.
That evening she looked so beautiful, that I, drunk as I was, forgot everything in the world and pressed her in my arms.… She swore to me that she had never loved anybody but me … and that was true … she really loved me … and in the very midst of her assurances she suddenly took it into her head to say a horrible phrase: “How unhappy I am! If I had not got married to Urbenin, I might now have married the Count!” This phrase was like a pail of cold water for me.… All that was boiling in my breast bubbled over. I seized the vile little creature by the shoulder and threw her to the ground as you throw a ball. My rage reached its maximum.… Well.… I finished her.… I just finished her.… Kuz'ma's case, you understand.…”
I glanced at Kamyshev. On his face I could neither read repentance nor regret. “I just finished her” was said as easily as “I just had a smoke.” In my turn I also experienced a feeling of wrath and loathing.… I turned away.
“And Urbenin is in penal servitude?” I asked quietly.
“Yes.… I heard he had died on the way, but that is not certain.… What then?”
“What then? An innocent man is suffering and you ask ‘What then?’ ”
“But what am I to do? To go and confess?”
“I should think so.”
“Well, let us suppose it!… I have nothing against taking Urbenin's place, but I won't yield without a fight.… Let them take me if they want, but I won't go to them. Why did they not take me when I was in their hands? At Olga's funeral I squalled so long, and had such hysterics that even the blind must have seen the truth.… It's not my fault that they are stupid.”