Inadequately handled, this scene could become grotesque. It ranks amongst the finest in the book. In theatrical jargon it would be described as a _utility_, in literature as a _cheville_, but it is precisely one of the rarest manifestations of Dostoevsky’s artistry. Like Pushkin he could say, “I have never treated anything lightly,” which is the hallmark of a great artist, utilizing everything, transforming disadvantage into opportunity. At this stage the pace needs must slacken, and every detail that can arrest events in their precipitancy becomes of supreme importance. The passages where Dostoevsky describes the arrival, unannounced, of Shatov’s wife, the conversation between husband and wife, Kirillov’s interposition, and the prompt establishment of an intimacy between the two men, constitute perhaps the most moving chapter in the book. We marvel anew at the utter absence of jealousy I discussed with you on a previous occasion. Shatov knows that his wife is going to have a child, but the father of this child she expects is not even mentioned. Shatov is consumed with love for this suffering creature who can find none but words that wound. “It was only that fact [i.e. his wife’s reappearance] that saved the scoundrels from Shatov’s carrying out his intention, and at the same time helped them to get rid of him. To begin with, it agitated Shatov, threw him out of his regular routine, and deprived him of his usual clear-sightedness and caution. Any idea of his own danger would be the last thing to enter his head at this moment when he was absorbed with such different considerations.”[127] But to come back to Kirillov: the time is at hand when Pyotr Stepanovitch calculates personal advantage from the other man’s suicide. What grounds has Kirillov for taking his own life? Pyotr Stepanovitch questions him: he has no clear idea, and is seeking clumsily to get at the truth. Up till the last minute, he is in terror lest Kirillov change his mind and thus escape him. But no! “I won’t put it off. I want to kill myself now,”[128] says Kirillov. The conversation between Verhovensky and Kirillov is especially obscure, obscure even in Dostoevsky’s own mind. As we have earlier observed, Dostoevsky never expresses his ideas as ideas pure and simple, but always through the medium of his characters who become their interpreters. Kirillov is in a highly unusual pathological state, for in a moment or two he is going to take his own life, and his talk is agitated and incoherent. We are left to unravel in it the clue to Dostoevsky’s own thought. The idea which prompts Kirillov’s suicide is of a mystic nature and closed to Pyotr Stepanovitch’s comprehension. “If God exists, all is His will, and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will, and I am bound to show self-will.... I am bound to show myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands....” “‘God is necessary and so must exist,’ said Kirillov.