lties besetting his position, to see how
desperate, how hideous, how absurd it was, to understand how many
obstacles there still remained for him to surmount, perhaps even
crimes to commit, to escape from this house and return home, he would
most likely have withdrawn from the struggle, and have gone at once
and given himself up to justice; it was not cowardice which would have
prompted him to do so, but the horror of what he had done. This last
impression became more and more powerful every minute. Nothing in the
world could now have made him return to the trunk, nor even reenter
the room in which it lay. Little by little his mind became diverted by
other thoughts, and he lapsed into a kind of reverie; at times the
murderer seemed to forget his position, or rather the most important
part of it, and to concentrate his attention on trifles. After a
while, happening to glance in the kitchen, he observed a pail half
full of water, standing on a bench, and that gave him the idea of
washing his hands and the hatchet. The blood had made his hands
sticky. After plunging the blade of the hatchet in the water, he took
a small piece of soap which lay on the window sill, and commenced his
ablutions. When he had washed his hands, he set to cleaning the iron
part of his weapon; then he devoted three minutes to soaping the
wooden handle, which was also stained with blood.

After this he wiped it with a cloth which had been hung up to dry on a
line stretched across the kitchen. This done, he drew near the window
and carefully examined the hatchet for some minutes. The accusing
stains had disappeared, but the handle was still damp. Raskolnikoff
carefully hid the weapon under his coat by replacing it in the loop;
after which, he minutely inspected his clothes, that is to say so far
as the dim light of the kitchen allowed him to do so. He saw nothing
suspicious about the coat and trousers, but there were bloodstains on
the boots. He removed them with the aid of a damp rag. But these
precautions only half reassured him, for he knew that he could not see
properly and that certain stains had very likely escaped him. He stood
irresolute in the middle of the room, a prey to a somber, agonizing
thought, the thought that he was going mad, that at that moment he was
not in a fit state to come to a determination and to watch over his
security, that his way of going to work was probably not the one the
circumstances demanded. "Good heavens! I ough