“Well, well! Come in, then, if you like; I'm here!” he called from the window.

Raskolnikov went up to the tavern.

He found him in a very small back room, with one window, adjacent to the main room where shopkeepers, clerks, and a great many people of all sorts were drinking tea at twenty little tables, to the shouting of a desperate chorus of singers. From somewhere came the click of billiard balls. On the table in front of Svidrigailov stood an open bottle of champagne and a half-filled glass. Also in the room were a boy organ-grinder with a small barrel-organ, and a healthy, ruddy-cheeked girl in a tucked-up striped skirt and a Tyrolean hat with ribbons, a singer, about eighteen years old, who, in spite of the chorus in the next room, was singing some lackey song in a rather husky contralto to the organ-grinder's accompaniment . . .

“That'll do now!” Svidrigailov interrupted her as Raskolnikov came in.

The girl broke off at once and stood waiting respectfully. She had also been singing her rhymed lackey stuff with a serious and respectful look on her face.

“Hey, Filipp, a glass!” cried Svidrigailov.

“I won't drink any wine,” said Raskolnikov.

“As you wish; it wasn't for you. Drink, Katya! No more for today— off you go!” He poured her a full glass of wine and laid out a yellow bank note. Katya drank the wine down as women do—that is, without a pause, in twenty sips—took the money, kissed Svidrigailov's hand, which he quite seriously allowed to be kissed, and walked out of the room. The boy with the barrel-organ trailed after her. They had both been brought in from the street. Svidrigailov had not spent even a week in Petersburg, but everything around him was already on some sort of patriarchal footing. The tavern lackey, Filipp, was also by now a “familiar” and quite obsequious. The door to the main room could be locked; Svidrigailov seemed at home in this room and spent, perhaps, whole days in it. The tavern was dirty, wretched, not even of a middling sort.

“I was on my way to your place, I was looking for you,” Raskolnikov began, “but why did I suddenly turn down------sky Prospect just now from the Haymarket! I never turn or come this way. I turn right from the Haymarket. And this isn't the way to your place. I just turned and here you are! It's strange!”

“Why don't you say straight out: it's a miracle!”

“Because it may only be chance.”

“Just look how they all have this twist in them!” Svidrigailov guffawed. “Even if they secretly believe in miracles, they won't admit it! And now you say it 'may' only be chance. They're all such little cowards here when it comes to their own opinion, you can't imagine, Rodion Romanych! I'm not talking about you. You have your own opinion and were not afraid to have it. It was that in you that drew my curiosity.”

“And nothing else?”

“But surely that's enough.”

Svidrigailov was obviously in an excited state, but only a little; he had drunk only half a glass of wine.

“I believe you came to see me before you found out that I was capable of having what you refer to as my own opinion,” Raskolnikov observed.

“Well, it was a different matter then. Each of us takes his own steps. And as for the miracle, let me say that you seem to have slept through these past two or three days. I myself suggested this tavern to you, and there was no miracle in your coming straight here; I gave you all the directions myself, described the place where it stands, and told you the hours when I could be found here. Remember?”

“I forgot,” Raskolnikov answered in surprise.

“I believe it. I told you twice. The address got stamped automatically in your memory. So you turned here automatically, strictly following my directions without knowing it yourself. I had no hope that you understood me as I was telling it to you then. You give yourself away too much, Rodion Romanych. And another thing: I'm convinced that many people in Petersburg talk to themselves as they walk. This is a city of half-crazy people. If we had any science, then physicians, lawyers, and philosophers could do the most valuable research on Petersburg, each in his own field. One seldom finds a place where there are so many gloomy, sharp, and strange influences on the soul of man as in Petersburg. The climatic influences alone are already worth something! And at the same time this is the administrative center of the whole of Russia, and its character must be reflected in everything. But that's not the point now; the point is that I've already observed you several times from the side. You walk out of the house with your head still high. After twenty steps you lower it and put your hands behind your back. You look but apparently no longer see anything either in front of you or to the sides. Finally you begin moving your lips and talking to yourself, sometimes freeing one hand and declaiming, and finally you stop in the middle of the street for a long time. It's really not good, sir. Someone besides me may notice you, and that is not at all to your advantage. It makes no difference to me, in fact, and I'm not going to cure you, but, of course, you understand me.”

“And do you know that I'm being followed?” Raskolnikov asked, glancing at him searchingly.

“No, I know nothing about that,” Svidrigailov answered, as if in surprise.

“Well, then let's leave me alone,” Raskolnikov muttered, frowning.

“All right, let's leave you alone.”

“Better tell me, if you come here to drink and twice told me to come to you here, why did you hide and try to leave just now, when I looked in the window from the street? I noticed it very well.”

“Heh, heh! And why, when I was standing in your doorway that time, did you lie on your sofa with your eyes shut, pretending you were asleep, when you weren't asleep at all? I noticed it very well.”

“I may have had...reasons...you know that yourself.”

“And I may have had my reasons, though you are not going to know them.”

Raskolnikov lowered his right elbow to the table, propped his chin from underneath with the fingers of his right hand, and fixed his eyes on Svidrigailov. For a minute or so he studied his face, which had always struck him before as well. It was somehow a strange face, more like a mask: white, ruddy, with ruddy, scarlet lips, a light blond beard, and still quite thick blond hair. The eyes were somehow too blue, and their look was somehow too heavy and immobile. There was something terribly unpleasant in this handsome and, considering the man's age, extremely youthful face. Svidrigailov's clothes were stylish, summery, light; especially stylish was his linen. On his finger there was an enormous ring with an expensive stone.

“But do I really have to bother with you as well?” Raskolnikov said suddenly, coming out into the open with convulsive impatience. “Though you're perhaps a most dangerous man, if you should decide to do me harm, I don't want to go against myself anymore. I'll show you now that I don't care as much about myself as you probably think. Know, then, that I've come to tell you straight out: if you still harbor your former intentions towards my sister, and if you think of using some recent discovery for that end, I will kill you before you can put me in jail. My word is good: you know I'm capable of keeping it. Second, if you want to announce something to me—because it has seemed to me all along as if you had something to tell me—do so quickly, because time is precious, and very soon it may be too late.”

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Svidrigailov asked, studying him curiously.

“Each of us takes his own steps,” Raskolnikov said glumly and impatiently.

“You yourself just invited me to be sincere, and now you refuse to answer the very first question,” Svidrigailov observed with a smile. “You keep thinking I have some purposes, and so you look at me suspiciously. Well, that's quite understandable in your position. But however much I may wish to become closer to you, I still won't go to the trouble of reassuring you to the contrary. By God, the game isn't worth the candle; besides, I wasn't intending to talk with you about anything very special.”