dandy, "What is it to do with you?"
The policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed. Raskolnikov
laughed.
"Well!" ejaculated the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he
walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov for a
madman or something even worse.
"He has carried off my twenty copecks," Raskolnikov murmured angrily
when he was left alone. "Well, let him take as much from the other
fellow to allow him to have the girl and so let it end. And why did I
want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help? Let
them devour each other alive--what is to me? How did I dare to give him
twenty copecks? Were they mine?"
In spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down on
the deserted seat. His thoughts strayed aimlessly.... He found it hard
to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget himself
altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and begin life
anew....
"Poor girl!" he said, looking at the empty corner where she had
sat--"She will come to herself and weep, and then her mother will find
out.... She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating and
then maybe, turn her out of doors.... And even if she does not, the
Darya Frantsovnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be
slipping out on the sly here and there. Then there will be the hospital
directly (that's always the luck of those girls with respectable
mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then... again the hospital...
drink... the taverns... and more hospital, in two or three years--a
wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen.... Have not I seen
cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? Why, they've all
come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That's as it should
be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year
go... that way... to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain
chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words
they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.... Once you've said
'percentage' there's nothing more to worry about. If we had any other
word... maybe we might feel more uneasy.... But what if Dounia were one
of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?
"But where am I going?" he thought suddenly. "Strange, I came out for
something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out.... I was going
to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Razumihin. That's wha
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