“It's not as if you were burying me or saying good-bye forever,” he said, somehow strangely.

It was as if he smiled, but at the same time as if it were not a smile.

“Though, who knows, maybe this is the last time we'll see each other,” he added inadvertently.

He was thinking it to himself, but somehow it got spoken aloud.

“What's the matter with you!” his mother cried out.

“Where are you going, Rodya?” Dunya asked, somehow strangely.

“No, I really must,” he answered vaguely, as if hesitating over what he wanted to say. But there was a sort of sharp determination in his pale face.

“I wanted to tell you...as I was coming here...I wanted to tell you, mama...and you, Dunya, that it's better if we part ways for a while. I'm not feeling well, I'm not at ease...I'll come myself afterwards...when I can. I think of you and love you...Leave me! Leave me alone! I decided on it even before...I decided on it for certain...Whatever happens to me, whether I perish or not, I want to be alone. Forget me altogether. It's better...Don't make inquiries about me. When need be, I'll come myself, or... send for you. Perhaps everything will rise again! ... But for now, if you love me, give in...Otherwise I'll start hating you, I feel it...Good-bye!”

“Lord!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

Mother and sister were both terribly frightened; so was Razumikhin.

“Rodya, Rodya! Make peace with us, let's be as we used to be!” his poor mother exclaimed.

He slowly turned towards the door, and slowly began walking out of the room. Dunya overtook him.

“Brother! What are you doing to mother!” she whispered, her eyes burning with indignation.

He gave her a heavy look.

“It's all right, I'll be back, I'll still come!” he muttered half aloud, as if not quite aware of what he wanted to say, and walked out of the room.

“Wicked, unfeeling egoist!” Dunya cried out.

“He's not unfeeling, he's cra-a-azy! He's mad! Don't you see that? If not, you're unfeeling yourself! . . .” Razumikhin whispered hotly, just over her shoulder, squeezing her hand hard.

“I'll be back right away!” he cried, turning to Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who had gone numb, and he ran out of the room.

Raskolnikov was waiting for him at the end of the corridor.

“I knew you'd come running,” he said. “Go back to them and be with them...Be with them tomorrow, too...and always. I'll come...maybe...if I can. Good-bye!”

And without offering his hand, he began walking away.

“But where are you going? Why? What's wrong with you? You can't do this!” Razumikhin kept murmuring, utterly at a loss.

Raskolnikov stopped again.

“Once and for all, never ask me about anything. I have no answers for you...Don't come to me. Maybe I'll come here. Leave me...but don't leave them. Do you understand me?”

It was dark in the corridor; they were standing near a light. For a minute they looked silently at each other. Razumikhin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov's burning and fixed look seemed to grow more intense every moment, penetrating his soul, his consciousness. All at once Razumikhin gave a start. Something strange seemed to pass between them...as if the hint of some idea, something horrible, hideous, flitted by and was suddenly understood on both sides...Razumikhin turned pale as a corpse.

“You understand now?” Raskolnikov said suddenly, with a painfully contorted face. “Go back, go to them,” he added suddenly, and, turning quickly, he walked out of the house . . .

I will not describe here what went on that evening at Pulcheria Alexandrovna's, how Razumikhin went back to them, how he tried to calm them, how he swore that Rodya needed to be allowed some rest in his illness, swore that Rodya would come without fail, would visit them every day, that he was very, very upset, that he should not be irritated; that he, Razumikhin, would keep an eye on him, would find him a doctor, a good doctor, the best, a whole consultation...In short, from that evening on Razumikhin became their son and brother.

IV

And Raskolnikov went straight to the house on the canal where Sonya lived. It was a three-storied, old, and green-colored house. He sought out the caretaker and got vague directions from him as to where Kapernaumov the tailor lived. Having located the entrance to a narrow and dark stairway in the corner of the yard, he went up, finally, to the second floor and came out onto a gallery running around it on the courtyard side. While he was wandering in the darkness and in perplexity with regard to the possible whereabouts of Kapernaumov's entrance, a door opened suddenly, three steps away from him; he took hold of it mechanically.

“Who's there?” a woman's voice asked in alarm.

“It's me...to see you,” Raskolnikov replied, and stepped into the tiny entryway. There, on a chair with a broken seat, stood a candle in a bent copper candlestick.

“It's you! Lord!” Sonya cried weakly, and stood rooted to the spot.

“Where do I go? In here?”

And, trying not to look at her, Raskolnikov went quickly into the room.

A moment later Sonya came in with the candle, put the candlestick down, and stood before him, completely at a loss, all in some inexpressible agitation, and obviously frightened by his unexpected visit. Color suddenly rushed to her pale face, and tears even came to her eyes...She had a feeling of nausea, and shame, and sweetness...Raskolnikov quickly turned away and sat down on a chair by the table. He managed to glance around the room as he did so.

It was a big but extremely low-ceilinged room, the only one let by the Kapernaumovs, the locked door to whose apartment was in the wall to the left. Opposite, in the right-hand wall, there was another door, always tightly shut. This led to another, adjoining apartment, with a different number. Sonya's room had something barnlike about it; it was of a very irregular rectangular shape, which gave it an ugly appearance. A wall with three windows looking onto the canal cut somehow obliquely across the room, making one corner, formed of a terribly acute angle, run somewhere into the depths where, in the weak light, it could not even be seen very well; the other corner was too grotesquely obtuse. The whole big room had almost no furniture in it. There was a bed in the corner to the right; a chair next to it, nearer the door. Along the same wall as the bed, just by the door to the other apartment, stood a simple wooden table covered with a dark blue cloth and, at the table, two rush-bottom chairs. Then, against the opposite wall, near the acute corner, there was a small chest of drawers, made of plain wood, standing as if lost in the emptiness. That was all there was in the room. The yellowish, frayed, and shabby wallpaper was blackened in all the corners; it must have been damp and fumy in winter. The poverty was evident; there were not even any curtains over the bed.

Sonya looked silently at her visitor, who was examining her room so attentively and unceremoniously, and at last even began to tremble with fear, as though she were standing before the judge and ruler of her destiny.

“It's late . .. already eleven?” he asked, still without raising his eyes to her.

“Yes,” Sonya murmured. “Ah, yes, it is!” she suddenly hurried on, as if the whole way out for her lay there. “The landlord's clock just struck...I heard it myself...It is!”

“I've come to you for the last time,” Raskolnikov went on sullenly, though it was in fact the first time. “I may never see you again . . .”

“You're...going away?”

“I don't know...tomorrow, everything . . .”

“So you won't be at Katerina Ivanovna's tomorrow?” Sonya's voice faltered.

“I don't know. Tomorrow morning, everything...That's not the point; I came to say one word to you . . .”