ble. He took the purse, too. Then he went out of
his room, leaving the door open. He walked quickly and resolutely, and
though he felt shattered, he had his senses about him. He was afraid of
pursuit, he was afraid that in another half-hour, another quarter of an
hour perhaps, instructions would be issued for his pursuit, and so at
all costs, he must hide all traces before then. He must clear everything
up while he still had some strength, some reasoning power left him....
Where was he to go?

That had long been settled: "Fling them into the canal, and all traces
hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end." So he had decided in
the night of his delirium when several times he had had the impulse to
get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to get
rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along
the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked
several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not
think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps' edge,
and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and
people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed
from the banks on all sides; it would look suspicious for a man to go
down on purpose, stop, and throw something into the water. And what if
the boxes were to float instead of sinking? And of course they would.
Even as it was, everyone he met seemed to stare and look round, as if
they had nothing to do but to watch him. "Why is it, or can it be my
fancy?" he thought.

At last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to the
Neva. There were not so many people there, he would be less observed,
and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it was further
off. He wondered how he could have been wandering for a good half-hour,
worried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking of it
before. And that half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan, simply
because he had thought of it in delirium! He had become extremely absent
and forgetful and he was aware of it. He certainly must make haste.

He walked towards the Neva along V---- Prospect, but on the way
another idea struck him. "Why to the Neva? Would it not be better to go
somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the things
in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot
perhaps?" And though he felt incapable of clear j