She turned sharply and walked to the door.

“Dunya!” Raskolnikov stopped her, got up, and went to her. “This Razumikhin, Dmitri Prokofych, is a very good man.”

Dunya blushed a little.

“Well?” she asked, after waiting a moment.

“He is a practical man, hard-working, honest, and capable of deep love...Good-bye, Dunya.”

Dunya flushed all over, and then suddenly became alarmed.

“What is it, brother, are we really parting forever, since you're making me...such bequests?”

“Never mind...good-bye . . .”

He turned and walked away from her to the window. She stood, looked at him uneasily, and left in alarm.

No, he was not cold towards her. There had been a moment (the very last) when he had wanted terribly to embrace her tightly, to make it a real farewell, and even to tell her, but he had not even dared to give her his hand.

“She might shudder later when she remembered that I embraced her now; she might say I stole her kiss!

“And will this one endure, or will she not?” he added to himself, after a few minutes. “No, she will not; her kind cannot endure! Her kind can never endure...”

And he thought of Sonya.

There came a breath of fresh air from the window. The light outside was no longer shining so brightly. He suddenly took his cap and went out.

Of course, he could not and did not want to concern himself with his ill condition. But all this ceaseless anxiety and all this horror of the soul could not go without consequences. And if he was not yet lying in real delirium, it was perhaps precisely because this ceaseless inner anxiety still kept him on his feet and conscious, but somehow artificially, for a time.

He wandered aimlessly. The sun was going down. Some particular anguish had begun telling in him lately. There was nothing particularly acute or burning in it; but there came from it a breath of something permanent, eternal, a presentiment of unending years of this cold, deadening anguish, a presentiment of some eternity on “a square foot of space.” This feeling usually began to torment him even more strongly in the evening hours.

“Try keeping yourself from doing something stupid, with these stupid, purely physical ailments that depend only on some sunset! One could wind up going not just to Sonya, but to Dunya!” he muttered hatefully.

Someone called out to him. He turned around. Lebezyatnikov rushed up to him.

“Imagine, I was just at your place, I've been looking for you. Imagine, she carried out her intention and took the children away! Sofya Semyonovna and I had a hard time finding them. She's banging on a frying pan, making the children sing and dance. The children are crying. They stand at intersections and outside of shops. Foolish people are running after them. Come on!”

“And Sonya?...” Raskolnikov asked in alarm, hurrying after Lebezyatnikov.

“Simply in a frenzy. That is, Sofya Semyonovna's not in a frenzy, but Katerina Ivanovna is; however, Sofya Semyonovna's in a frenzy, too. And Katerina Ivanovna is in a complete frenzy. She's gone finally crazy, I tell you. They'll be taken to the police. You can imagine what effect that will have...They're at the canal now, near the------sky Bridge, not far from Sofya Semyonovna's. Nearby.”

At the canal, not very far from the bridge, two houses away from where Sonya lived, a small crowd of people had gathered. Boys and girls especially came running. The hoarse, strained voice of Katerina Ivanovna could already be heard from the bridge. And indeed it was a strange spectacle, capable of attracting the interest of the street public. Katerina Ivanovna, in her old dress, the flannel shawl, and a battered straw hat shoved to one side in an ugly lump, was indeed in a real frenzy. She was tired and short of breath. Her worn-out, consumptive face showed more suffering than ever (besides, a consumptive always looks more sick and disfigured outside, in the sun, than at home), but her agitated state would not leave her, and she was becoming more irritated every moment. She kept rushing to the children, yelling at them, coaxing them, teaching them right there, in front of people, how to dance and what to sing; she would start explaining to them why it was necessary, despair over their slow-wittedness, beat them...Then, before she had finished, she would rush to the public; if she noticed an even slightly well-dressed person stopping to look, she would immediately start explaining to him that this was what the children “of a noble, one might even say aristocratic, house” had been driven to. If she heard laughter or some taunting little remark from the crowd, she would immediately fall upon the impudent ones and start squabbling with them. Some, indeed, were laughing; others were shaking their heads; in general, everyone was curious to see the crazy woman with her frightened children. The frying pan Lebezyatnikov had spoken of was not there; at least Raskolnikov did not see it; but instead of banging on a frying pan, Katerina Ivanovna would begin clapping out the rhythm with her dry palms, making Polechka sing and Lenya and Kolya dance, even beginning to sing along herself, but breaking off each time at the second note with a racking cough, at which she would again fall into despair, curse her cough, and even weep. Most of all it was the frightened tears of Kolya and Lenya that drove her to distraction. There had indeed been an attempt to dress the children up in street-singers' costumes. The boy was wearing a turban of some red and white material, to represent a Turk. No costume could be found for Lenya; all she had was a red knitted worsted hat (or rather nightcap) from the late Semyon Zakharych, with a broken ostrich feather stuck in it that once belonged to Katerina Ivanovna's grandmother and had been kept until now in the trunk as a family curio. Polechka was wearing her usual little dress. Timid and lost, she watched her mother, would not leave her side, hiding her tears, guessing at her mother's madness, and looking around uneasily. The street and the crowd frightened her terribly. Sonya doggedly followed Katerina Ivanovna, weeping and begging her all the while to go back home. But Katerina Ivanovna was implacable.

“Stop, Sonya, stop!” she shouted in a hurried patter, choking and coughing. “You don't know what you're asking, you're like a child! I've already told you I won't go back to that drunken German woman. Let them all, let all of Petersburg see how a gentleman's children go begging, though their father served faithfully and honestly all his life and, one might say, died in service.” (Katerina Ivanovna had already managed to create this fantasy and believe in it blindly.) “Let him see, let that worthless runt of a general see. And how stupid you are, Sonya: what are we going to eat now, tell me? We've preyed upon you enough, I don't want any more of it! Ah, Rodion Romanych, it's you!” she exclaimed, noticing Raskolnikov and rushing to him. “Please explain to this little fool that this is the smartest thing we could do! Even organ-grinders make a living, and we'll be picked out at once, people will see that we're a poor, noble family of orphans, driven into abject poverty, and that runt of a general—he'll lose his position, you'll see! We'll stand under his windows every day, and when the sovereign drives by I'll kneel, push them all forward, and point to them: 'Protect us, father!' He's the father of all orphans, he's merciful, he'll protect us, you'll see, and that runt of a general, he'll...Lenya! Tenez-vous droite!^[124] You, Kolya, are going to dance again now. Why are you whimpering? He's whimpering again! What, what are you afraid of now, you little fool! Lord! What am I to do with them, Rodion Romanych! If you knew how muddleheaded they are! What can one do with the likes of them! ... ”