"Don't be uneasy; I am not deceiving you," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went on, rather coldly, with the air of a man who is only fulfilling a duty. "You question me as to what I know. I know that you entered that society abroad, two years ago, at the time of the old organisation, just before you went to America, and I believe, just after our last conversation, about which you wrote so much to me in your letter from America. By the way, I must apologise for not having answered you by letter, but confined myself to..." "To sending the money; wait a bit," Shatov interrupted, hurriedly pulling out a drawer in the table and taking from under some papers a rainbow-coloured note. "Here, take it, the hundred roubles you sent me; but for you I should have perished out there. I should have been a long time paying it back if it had not been for your mother. She made me a present of that note nine months ago, because I was so badly off after my illness. But, go on, please...." He was breathless. "In America you changed your views, and when you came back you wanted to resign. They gave you no answer, but charged you to take over a printing press here in Russia from someone, and to keep it till you handed it over to someone who would come from them for it. I don't know the details exactly, but I fancy that's the position in outline. You undertook it in the hope, or on the condition, that it would be the last task they would require of you, and that then they would release you altogether. Whether that is so or not, I learnt it, not from them, but quite by chance. But now for what I fancy you don't know; these gentry have no intention of parting with you." "That's absurd!" cried Shatov. "I've told them honestly that I've cut myself off from them in everything. That is my right, the right to freedom of conscience and of thought.... I won't put up with it! There's no power which could..." "I say, don't shout," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch said earnestly, checking him. "That Verhovensky is such a fellow that he may be listening to us now in your passage, perhaps, with his own ears or someone else's. Even that drunkard, Lebyadkin, was probably bound to keep an eye on you, and you on him, too, I dare say? You'd better tell me, has Verhovensky accepted your arguments now, or not?" "He has. He has said that it can be done and that I have the right...."