"You see, my dear and highly respected Andrey Antonovitch, you are cunning, but it's not come to _that_ yet and it certainly never will come to it, you understand?
Perhaps you do understand.

Though I did make an explanation in the proper quarter when I came back from abroad, and I really don't know why a man of certain convictions should not be able to work for the advancement of his sincere convictions...

but nobody _there_ has yet instructed me to investigate your character and I've not undertaken any such job from _them._ Consider: I need not have given those two names to you.

I might have gone straight _there;_ that is where I made my first explanations.

And if I'd been acting with a view to financial profit or my own interest in any way, it would have been a bad speculation on my part, for now they'll be grateful to you and not to me at headquarters.
I've done it solely for Shatov's sake," Pyotr Stepanovitch added generously, "for Shatov's sake, because of our old friendship....