Stavrogin fell silent and suddenly lapsed again into his old reverie. This came as though in fits and now for the third time. And the “I love” he said to Tikhon was also said almost in an impulse, at any rate unexpectedly to himself. More than a minute passed.
“Do not be angry,” Tikhon whispered, touching his arm very lightly with his finger and as though his courage failed him.
Stavrogin shuddered and frowned angrily.
“How did you know that I was angry?” he said hastily. Tikhon was about to reply, when he suddenly interrupted him in inexplicable alarm:
“Why did you think that I must necessarily become angry? Yes, I was angry; you are right; and just because I had said to you ‘I love.’ You are right, but you are a crude cynic, you think slightingly of human nature. There might have been no anger, had it been any one else but myself.... Though, it does not matter about others; it concerns me. After all, you are a queer fellow and crazy.”
He grew more and more irritated, and, strangely, made no attempt to restrain his language:
“Listen, I do not like spies and thought-readers, at any rate those who creep into my soul. I do not invite any one into my soul; I need no one; I am able to shift for myself. You think I am afraid of you,” he raised his voice and looked up defiantly; “you are quite convinced that I have come to confide to you some ‘terrible’ secret, and you are waiting for it with all the hermit curiosity of which you are capable. Understand then that I will confide nothing to you, no secret, because I can perfectly well do without you....”[[21]]
Tikhon looked at him firmly.
“It surprised you that the Lamb prefers a cold man to a merely lukewarm one,” he said. “You don’t want to be merely lukewarm. I have a foreboding that you are possessed by an extraordinary intention, perhaps a terrible one. I implore you, don’t torment yourself and tell me everything.”[[22]]
“And you knew for certain that I had come with something.”