Chapter III. A Romance Ended

At dawn in Skvoreshniki, Liza, disheveled and resolute after a night with Nikolay Stavrogin, speaks fatalistically of leaving. Stavrogin pleads to go away together, but Liza rejects him, exposing his generosity as unbearable and their mismatch. She hints at fearing something loathsome in his past, and he struggles between confession and silence.

Pyotr Stepanovich bursts in, announcing the Lebyadkins have been murdered during the night’s fires. He spins the news as exonerating and opportune, claiming coincidence and dangling freedom for Stavrogin to marry Liza. Stavrogin, tormented, first deflects, then tells Liza he did not kill them but knew they would be killed and did not stop it. Horrified, Liza departs at once.

Outside, Pyotr tries to shepherd Liza into secrecy and a carriage, but she insists on going to the murder site. She encounters Mavriky Nikolaevich, who has waited for her in the rain; he supports her as she, half-hysterical, seeks the victims, convinced this truth explains Stavrogin’s coldness. On their way they meet Stepan Trofimovich, theatrically outfitted for a quixotic flight from town; he blesses Liza and hurries on.

At the burned riverside quarter, the crowd, primed by rumor against Stavrogin, recognizes Liza and turns on her. Amid shouts that she has come to gawk at the dead, she is struck down. Mavriky fights through the crush but is seized; Liza is felled again before space opens around her. Bleeding and barely conscious, she is carried away as several assailants, including an excitable cabinet-maker, are arrested, though confusion over responsibility remains.