He raised his pensive eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he was sitting and she was still standing before him.

“Why are you standing? Sit down,” he said suddenly, in a changed, quiet and tender voice.

She sat down. He looked at her for about a minute, kindly and almost compassionately.

“How thin you are! Look at your hand! Quite transparent. Fingers like a dead person's.”

He took her hand. Sonya smiled weakly.

“I've always been like that,” she said.

“Even when you were living at home?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, but of course!” he uttered abruptly, and the expression of his face and the sound of his voice suddenly changed again. He looked once more around the room.

“You rent from Kapernaumov?”

“Yes, sir . . .”

“That's their door there?”

“Yes...They have a room the same as this one.”

“All in one room?”

“Yes, in one room, sir.”

“I'd be scared in your room at night,” he remarked sullenly.

“The landlords are very nice, very affectionate,” Sonya replied, as if she had still not come to her senses or collected her thoughts, “and all the furniture and everything...everything is theirs. And they're very kind, and the children often come to see me, too.”

“They're the ones who are tongue-tied?”

“Yes, sir...He stammers, and he's lame as well. And his wife, too...Not that she really stammers, but it's as if she doesn't quite get the words out. She's kind, very. And he's a former household serf. And there are seven children...and only the oldest one stammers; the rest are just sick...but they don't stammer...But how do you know about them?” she added with some surprise.

“Your father told me everything that time. He told me everything about you...How you went out at six o'clock, and came back after eight, and how Katerina Ivanovna knelt by your bed.”

Sonya was embarrassed.

“I thought I saw him today,” she whispered hesitantly.

“Whom?”

“My father. I was walking along the street, nearby, at the corner, around ten o'clock, and he seemed to be walking ahead of me. It looked just like him. I was even going to go to Katerina Ivanovna . . .”

“You were out walking?”

“Yes,” Sonya whispered abruptly, embarrassed again and looking down.

“But Katerina Ivanovna all but beat you when you lived at your father's?”

“Ah, no, what are you saying, no!” Sonya looked at him even with some sort of fright.

“So you love her?”

“Love her? But, of co-o-ourse!” Sonya drew the word out plaintively, suddenly clasping her hands together with suffering. “Ah! You don't...If only you knew her! She's just like a child. It's as if she's lost her mind...from grief. And she used to be so intelligent...so generous...so kind! You know nothing, nothing...ah!”

Sonya spoke as if in despair, worrying and suffering and wringing her hands. Her pale cheeks became flushed again; her eyes had a tormented look. One could see that terribly much had been touched in her, that she wanted terribly to express something, to speak out, to intercede. Some sort of insatiable compassion, if one may put it so, showed suddenly in all the features of her face.

“Beat me? How can you! Beat me—Lord! And even if she did beat me, what of it! Well, what of it! You know nothing, nothing...She's so unhappy; ah, how unhappy she is! And sick...She wants justice...She's pure. She believes so much that there should be justice in everything, and she demands it...Even if you tortured her, she wouldn't act unjustly. She herself doesn't notice how impossible it all is that there should be justice in people, and it vexes her... Like a child, like a child! She's a just woman!”

“And what will become of you?”

Sonya looked at him questioningly.

“They're all on your hands. True, it was all on you before as well, and it was to you that your late father came to beg for the hair of the dog. Well, what will become of you now?”

“I don't know,” Sonya said sadly.

“Will they stay there?”

“I don't know, they owe rent for the apartment; only I heard today that the landlady said she wants to turn them out, and Katerina Ivanovna says herself that she won't stay a moment longer.”

“How is she so brave? She's counting on you?”

“Ah, no, don't talk like that! ...  We're all one, we live as one.” Sonya again became all excited and even vexed, just like a canary or some other little bird getting angry. “And what is she to do? What, what is she to do?” she repeated, hotly and excitedly. “And how she cried, how she cried today! She's losing her mind, did you notice? She is; she keeps worrying like a little girl that everything should be done properly tomorrow, the meal and everything...then she wrings her hands, coughs up blood, cries, and suddenly starts beating her head against the wall as if in despair. And then she gets comforted again; she keeps hoping in you; she says you'll be her helper now, and that she'll borrow a little money somewhere, and go back with me to her town, and start an institution for noble girls, and she'll make me a supervisor, and a completely new, beautiful life will begin for us, and she kisses me, embraces me, comforts me, and she really believes it! She really believes in her fantasies! Well, how can one contradict her? And she spent the whole day today washing, cleaning, mending; she brought the tub into the room by herself, with her weak strength, out of breath, and just collapsed on the bed; and she and I also went to the market in the morning to buy shoes for Polechka and Lenya, because theirs fell to pieces, only we didn't have enough money, it was much more than we could spend, and she had picked out such lovely shoes, because she has taste, you don't know...She just cried right there in the shop, in front of the shopkeepers, because there wasn't enough...Ah, it was such a pity to see!”

“Well, after that one can understand why you...live as you do,” Raskolnikov said, with a bitter smirk.

“And don't you pity her? Don't you?” Sonya heaved herself up again. “You, I know, you gave her all you had, and you hadn't even seen anything. And if you'd seen everything, oh, Lord! And so many times, so many times I've brought her to tears! Just last week! Ah, me! Only a week before his death. I acted cruelly! And I've done it so many times, so many times. Ah, it's been so painful to remember it all day long today!”

Sonya even wrung her hands as she spoke, so painful was it to remember.

“You, cruel?”

“Yes, me, me! I came then,” she continued, weeping, “and my father said, 'Read to me, Sonya,' he said, 'there's an ache in my head, read to me...here's a book'—he had some book, he got it from Andrei Semyonovich, he lives here, Lebezyatnikov, he was always getting such funny books. And I said, 'It's time I was going,' I just didn't want to read, because I stopped by mainly to show Katerina Ivanovna the collars; Lizaveta, the dealer, had brought me some cheap collars and cuffs, pretty, new ones, with a pattern. And Katerina Ivanovna liked them very much, she put them on and looked at herself in the mirror, and she liked them very, very much. 'Sonya, please,' she said, 'give them to me.' She said please, and she wanted them so much. But where would she go in them? She was just remembering her former happy days! She looked in the mirror, admired herself, and she's had no dresses, no dresses at all, no things, for so many years now! And she never asks anything from anybody; she's proud, she'd sooner give away all she has, but this time she asked—she liked them so much! And I was sorry to think of giving them away; I said, 'But what for, Katerina Ivanovna?' I said that: 'what for?' I should never have said that to her. She just looked at me, and she took it so hard, so hard, that I refused, and it was such a pity to see...And it wasn't because of the collars, but because I refused, I could see that. Ah, if only I could take it all back now, do it over again, all those past words...Oh, I...but why am I talking about it! ... it's all the same to you!”