“What would have happened to me without you!” she said quickly, coming up to him in the middle of the room. Obviously it was just this that she was in a hurry to say to him. This was why she had been waiting for him.

Raskolnikov walked over to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had just risen. She stood in front of him, two steps away, exactly as the day before.

“Well, Sonya?” he said, and suddenly felt that his voice was trembling. “So the whole matter indeed rested on your 'social position and its accompanying habits.' Did you understand that just now?”

Suffering showed on her face.

“Only don't talk to me like you did yesterday,” she interrupted him. “Please, don't start. There's enough pain as it is . . .”

She smiled hurriedly, for fear he might not like her reproach.

“It was stupid of me to leave. What's going on there now? I was about to go back, but kept thinking...you might come.”

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was throwing them out of the apartment, and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere “in search of truth.”

“Ah, my God!” Sonya heaved herself up. “Let's go quickly . . .”

And she seized her cape.

“It's the same thing eternally!” Raskolnikov cried out in vexation. “All you ever think about is them! Stay with me a little.”

“But...Katerina Ivanovna?”

“Katerina Ivanovna certainly won't do without you; she'll come here herself, since she ran away from the house,” he added peevishly. “If she doesn't find you here, you'll be blamed for it . . .”

In painful indecision, Sonya sat down on a chair. Raskolnikov was silent, looking at the ground and thinking something over.

“Suppose Luzhin didn't want to do it this time,” he began, without glancing at Sonya. “Well, but if he had wanted to, or if it had somehow entered into his calculations, he'd have locked you up in prison, if Lebezyatnikov and I hadn't happened to be there. Eh?”

“Yes,” she said in a weak voice. “Yes!” she repeated, distracted and alarmed.

“And I really might have happened not to be there! And as for Lebezyatnikov, he turned up quite accidentally.”

Sonya was silent.

“Well, and what if it had been prison? What then? Remember what I said yesterday?”

Again she did not reply. He waited.

“And I thought you'd cry out again: 'Ah, stop, don't say it!' “ Raskolnikov laughed, but somehow with a strain. “What now, still silent?” he asked after a moment. “We've got to talk about something! I, namely, would be interested in finding out how you would now resolve a certain 'question,' as Lebezyatnikov says.” (It seemed he was beginning to get confused.) “No, really, I'm serious. Imagine to yourself, Sonya, that you knew all of Luzhin's intentions beforehand, knew (I mean, for certain) that as a result of them Katerina Ivanovna would perish altogether, and the children as well, and with you thrown in (just so, thrown in, since you consider yourself nothing). Polechka, too...because she'll go the same way. Well, so, if all this was suddenly given to you to decide: is it for him or for them to go on living; that is, should Luzhin live and commit abominations, or should Katerina Ivanovna die? How would you decide which of them was to die? That's what I'm asking.”

Sonya looked at him worriedly: she could detect something peculiar in this uncertain speech, approaching its object from afar.

“I had a feeling you were going to ask something like that,” she said, looking at him searchingly.

“Well, so you did; all the same, how is one to decide?”

“Why do you ask about what cannot be?” Sonya said with loathing.

“So it's better for Luzhin to live and commit abominations! You don't dare to decide even in this?”

“But I cannot know divine Providence...And why do you ask what cannot be asked? Why such empty questions? How could it come about that it should depend on my decision? And who put me here to judge who is to live and who is not to live?”

“Once divine Providence gets mixed up in it, there's nothing to be done,” Raskolnikov growled sullenly.

“You'd better say straight out what you want!” Sonya cried with suffering. “You're leading up to something again...Can it be that you came only to torment me?”

She could not help herself and suddenly began weeping bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy anguish. About five minutes passed.

“Yes, you're right, Sonya,” he said at last, softly. He had changed suddenly; his affectedly insolent and powerlessly challenging tone had disappeared. Even his voice became suddenly weaker. “I told you yesterday that I would not come to ask forgiveness, and now I've begun by almost asking forgiveness...I was speaking about Luzhin and Providence for my own sake...I was seeking forgiveness, Sonya . . .”

He tried to smile, but this pale smile told of something powerless and incomplete. He bent his head and covered his face with his hands.

And suddenly a strange, unexpected feeling of corrosive hatred for Sonya came over his heart. As if surprised and frightened by this feeling, he suddenly raised his head and looked at her intently, but he met her anxious and painfully caring eyes fixed upon him; here was love; his hatred vanished like a phantom. That was not it; he had mistaken one feeling for another. All it meant was that the moment had come.

Again he covered his face with his hands and bent his head. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from the chair, looked at Sonya, and, without saying anything, went mechanically and sat on her bed.

This moment, as it felt to him, was terribly like the one when he had stood behind the old woman, having already freed the axe from its loop, and realized that “there was not another moment to lose.”

“What's the matter?” Sonya asked, becoming terribly timid.

He could not utter a word. This was not the way, this was not at all the way he had intended to announce it, and he himself did not understand what was happening with him now. She quietly went over, sat down on the bed beside him, and waited, without taking her eyes from him. Her heart was pounding and sinking. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face to her; he twisted his lips powerlessly in an effort to utter something. Horror swept over Sonya's heart.

“What's the matter with you?” she repeated, moving slightly away from him.

“Nothing, Sonya. Don't be afraid...Nonsense! Really, if you stop and think, it's—nonsense,” he muttered, with the look of a man lost in delirium. “Only why did I come to torment you?” he suddenly added, looking at her. “Really, why? That's what I keep asking myself, Sonya...”

Perhaps he had asked himself this question a quarter of an hour before, but now he spoke quite powerlessly, hardly aware of himself, and feeling a ceaseless trembling all over.

“Oh, how tormented you are!” she said with suffering, peering at him.

“It's all nonsense! ... Listen, Sonya” (suddenly, for some reason, he gave a pale and powerless smile, which lasted about two seconds), “do you remember what I wanted to tell you yesterday?”

Sonya waited uneasily.

“I said, as I was leaving, that I was perhaps saying good-bye to you forever, but that if I came today, I'd tell you...who killed Lizaveta.”

She suddenly began trembling all over.

“So, you see, I've come to tell you.”

“Then, yesterday, you really . . .” she whispered with difficulty. “But how do you know?” she added quickly, as if suddenly coming to her senses.

Sonya began breathing with difficulty. Her face was becoming paler and paler.

“I know.”

She was silent for a minute or so.

“What, has he been found?” she asked timidly.

“No, he hasn't.”

“Then how do you know about it?” she asked again, barely audibly, and again after almost a minute's silence.

He turned to her and looked at her very, very intently.