“But that's not it, that's not it at all! Brother, what are you saying!”

“Ah, the wrong form, not so good aesthetically! Well, I decidedly do not understand why hurling bombs at people, according to all the rules of siege warfare, is a more respectable form. Fear of aesthetics is the first sign of powerlessness! ... Never, never have I been more clearly aware of it than now, and now more than ever I fail to understand my crime! Never, never have I been stronger or more certain than now! . . .”

Color even came to his pale, worn-out face. But as he was uttering this last exclamation, his eyes suddenly met Dunya's, and so great, so great was the anguish for him in those eyes that he came involuntarily to his senses. He felt that after all he had made these two poor women unhappy. After all, it was he who had caused . . .

“Dunya, dear! If I am guilty, forgive me (though if I'm guilty, I cannot be forgiven). Good-bye! Let's not argue! It's time, it really is. Don't follow me, I beg you, I still have to stop at. . . But go now, at once, and stay with mother. I beg you to do that. It is my last, my greatest request of you. Don't leave her for a moment; I left her in such anxiety that she'll hardly survive it: she'll either die or lose her mind. So be with her! Razumikhin will stay by you; I talked with him...Don't weep over me: I'll try to be both courageous and honest all my life, even though I'm a murderer. Perhaps you'll hear my name someday. I won't disgrace you, you'll see; I'll still prove...well, good-bye for now,” he hastened to finish, again noticing some strange expression in Dunya's eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying so? Don't cry, don't; we're not parting forever! ... Ah, yes! Wait, I forgot! . . .”

He went to the table, took a thick, dusty book, opened it, and took from between the pages a small watercolor portrait on ivory. It was a portrait of his landlady's daughter, his former fiancée, who had died of a fever, the same strange girl who had wanted to go into a convent. He gazed at that expressive and sickly little face for a moment, kissed the portrait, and handed it to Dunechka.

“With her I used to talk a lot—about that, too—with her alone,” he said, reflecting. “I confided much to her heart of what later came true so hideously. Don't worry,” he turned to Dunya, “she didn't agree with it, as you don't, and I'm glad she's no longer here. The main thing, the main thing is that now everything will go a new way, it will break in two,” he cried out suddenly, returning again to his anguish, “everything, everything, and am I ready for that? Do I myself want it? They say the ordeal is necessary for me! Why, why all these senseless ordeals? Why, am I going to have a better understanding then, when I'm crushed by suffering and idiocy, in senile powerlessness after twenty years of hard labor, than I have now? And why, then, should I live? And why do I agree to such a life now? Oh, I knew I was a scoundrel as I was standing over the Neva at dawn today!”

They both finally left. It was hard for Dunya, but she loved him! She began to walk away, but having gone about fifty steps, she turned once more to look at him. He was still in sight. When he reached the corner, he, too, turned around; their eyes met for a last time; but noticing that she was looking at him, he impatiently and even irritably waved his hand at her to go on, and himself sharply turned the corner.

“I'm wicked, I see that,” he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a moment later of his irritated gesture to Dunya. “But why do they love me so, when I'm unworthy of it! Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me, and I myself had never loved anyone! None of this would be! Curious, is it possible that in these next fifteen or twenty years my soul will become so humbled that I'll reverently snivel in front of people, calling myself a robber with every word? Yes, precisely, precisely! That's why they're going to exile me now, that's what they want. . . Look at them all scuttling up and down the street, and each one of them is a scoundrel and a robber by his very nature; worse than that—an idiot! But let exile pass me by, and they'll all go wild with noble indignation! Oh, how I hate them all!”

He fell to pondering deeply “by what process it might come about that he would finally humble himself before them all without reasoning, humble himself from conviction? But, after all, why not? Of course, that is how it should be. Won't twenty years of unremitting oppression finish him off completely? Water wears away stone. But why, why live in that case? Why am I going now, if I know myself that it will all be precisely so, as if by the book, and not otherwise!”

It was perhaps the hundredth time he had asked himself that question since the previous evening, and yet he was going.

VIII

When he came to Sonya's, dusk was already falling. Sonya had been waiting for him all day in terrible anxiety. She had waited together with Dunya, who, remembering Svidrigailov's words of the day before that Sonya “knew about it,” had come to her that morning. We shall not relate the details of the conversation and the tears of the two women, or how close they became to each other. From this meeting Dunya drew at least one consolation, that her brother would not be alone: he had gone first to her, to Sonya, with his confession; in her he had sought a human being when he needed a human being; and she would go with him wherever fate sent him. She had not asked, but she knew it would be so. She looked at Sonya even with a certain reverence, and at first almost embarrassed her by the reverent feeling with which she treated her. Sonya was all but on the verge of tears: she considered herself, on the contrary, unworthy even to glance at Dunya. The beautiful image of Dunya as she had bowed to her with such attention and respect at the time of their first meeting at Raskolnikov's, had since remained forever in her soul as one of the most beautiful and unattainable visions of her life.

Dunechka finally could not stand it and left Sonya to go and wait for her brother in his apartment; she kept thinking he might come there first. Left alone, Sonya immediately began to be tormented by fear at the thought that he might indeed commit suicide. Dunya was afraid of the same thing. But they had competed all day long in reassuring each other by every possible argument that it could not be so, and had felt calmer while they were together. Once they parted, however, they both began thinking only of that. Sonya kept recalling how Svidrigailov had told her the day before that there were two ways open for Raskolnikov—Siberia, or...She knew, besides, his vanity, his presumption, his self-conceit, and his unbelief. “Can it be that he has only faintheartedness and the fear of death to make him live?” she thought at last, in despair. Meanwhile the sun was going down. She stood sadly by the window, gazing out—but from the window only the blank, unpainted wall of the neighboring house could be seen. At last, when she had become completely convinced that the unfortunate man was dead—he walked into her room.

A joyful cry burst from her breast. But, looking closely at his face, she suddenly grew pale.

“Well, so!” Raskolnikov said, grinning, “I've come for your crosses, Sonya. You're the one who was sending me to the crossroads; why turn coward now that it's come to business?”

Sonya looked at him in amazement. His tone seemed strange to her; a cold shiver ran through her body; but a moment later she realized that all of it—both the tone and the words—was put on. He even stared somehow into the corner as he talked to her, as if trying to avoid looking her straight in the face.

“You see, Sonya, I figure that it may be more advantageous this way. There's a certain circumstance...Well, but it's a long tale to tell, and there's no point. Only, you know what makes me mad? It irks me that all those stupid, beastly mugs will immediately surround me, gaping at me with their eyeballs hanging out, asking me their stupid questions, which I will have to answer—pointing their fingers at me...Pah! You know, I'm not going to go to Porfiry; I'm sick of him. Better if I go to my friend Gunpowder—now that will be a surprise, that will make an effect of sorts! And I'd better be more cool-headed; I've gotten too bilious lately. Would you believe it, I all but shook my fist at my sister just now, simply because she turned to look at me a last time. Swinishness, that's the name for it! Eh, see what I've come to! Well, so where are the crosses?”