“Surely you must understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone? You don’t understand that there may be a man, one man out of your thousands of millions, one man who won’t bear it and does not want to.”
“All I understand is that you seem to be hesitating.… That’s very bad.”
“Stavrogin, too, is consumed by an idea,” Kirillov said gloomily, pacing up and down the room. He had not noticed the previous remark.
“What?” Pyotr Stepanovitch pricked up his ears. “What idea? Did he tell you something himself?”
“No, I guessed it myself: if Stavrogin has faith, he does not believe that he has faith. If he hasn’t faith, he does not believe that he hasn’t.”
“Well, Stavrogin has got something else worse than that in his head,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered peevishly, uneasily watching the turn the conversation had taken and the pallor of Kirillov.
“Damn it all, he won’t shoot himself!” he was thinking. “I always suspected it; it’s a maggot in the brain and nothing more; what a rotten lot of people!”
“You are the last to be with me; I shouldn’t like to part on bad terms with you,” Kirillov vouchsafed suddenly.
Pyotr Stepanovitch did not answer at once. “Damn it all, what is it now?” he thought again.
“I assure you, Kirillov, I have nothing against you personally as a man, and always …”