Part 67 (1/2)

”Oh, if the Divine Providence is to be mixed up in it, there is no doing anything,” Raskolnikov grumbled morosely.

”You'd better say straight out what you want!” Sonia cried in distress.

”You are leading up to something again.... Can you have come simply to torture me?”

She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy misery. Five minutes pa.s.sed.

”Of course you're right, Sonia,” he said softly at last. He was suddenly changed. His tone of a.s.sumed arrogance and helpless defiance was gone.

Even his voice was suddenly weak. ”I told you yesterday that I was not coming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I've said is to ask forgiveness.... I said that about Luzhin and Providence for my own sake.

I was asking forgiveness, Sonia....”

He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete in his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.

And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred for Sonia pa.s.sed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It only meant that _that_ minute had come.

He hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonia, and without uttering a word sat down mechanically on her bed.

His sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he had stood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that ”he must not lose another minute.”

”What's the matter?” asked Sonia, dreadfully frightened.

He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way he had intended to ”tell” and he did not understand what was happening to him now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him and waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and sank. It was unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His lips worked, helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of terror pa.s.sed through Sonia's heart.

”What's the matter?” she repeated, drawing a little away from him.

”Nothing, Sonia, don't be frightened.... It's nonsense. It really is nonsense, if you think of it,” he muttered, like a man in delirium. ”Why have I come to torture you?” he added suddenly, looking at her. ”Why, really? I keep asking myself that question, Sonia....”

He had perhaps been asking himself that question a quarter of an hour before, but now he spoke helplessly, hardly knowing what he said and feeling a continual tremor all over.

”Oh, how you are suffering!” she muttered in distress, looking intently at him.

”It's all nonsense.... Listen, Sonia.” He suddenly smiled, a pale helpless smile for two seconds. ”You remember what I meant to tell you yesterday?”

Sonia waited uneasily.

”I said as I went away that perhaps I was saying good-bye for ever, but that if I came to-day I would tell you who... who killed Lizaveta.”

She began trembling all over.

”Well, here I've come to tell you.”

”Then you really meant it yesterday?” she whispered with difficulty.

”How do you know?” she asked quickly, as though suddenly regaining her reason.

Sonia's face grew paler and paler, and she breathed painfully.

”I know.”

She paused a minute.