ld be with us.... Zossimov will be there too. Will you come?"

"No."

"R-rubbish!" Razumihin shouted, out of patience. "How do you know?
You can't answer for yourself! You don't know anything about it....
Thousands of times I've fought tooth and nail with people and run back
to them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So
remember, Potchinkov's house on the third storey...."

"Why, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you'd let anybody beat you from sheer
benevolence."

"Beat? Whom? Me? I'd twist his nose off at the mere idea! Potchinkov's
house, 47, Babushkin's flat...."

"I shall not come, Razumihin." Raskolnikov turned and walked away.

"I bet you will," Razumihin shouted after him. "I refuse to know you if
you don't! Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him?"

"Yes."

"Talked to him?"

"Yes."

"What about? Confound you, don't tell me then. Potchinkov's house, 47,
Babushkin's flat, remember!"

Raskolnikov walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street.
Razumihin looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his hand he
went into the house but stopped short of the stairs.

"Confound it," he went on almost aloud. "He talked sensibly but yet...
I am a fool! As if madmen didn't talk sensibly! And this was just what
Zossimov seemed afraid of." He struck his finger on his forehead. "What
if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown himself.... Ach,
what a blunder! I can't." And he ran back to overtake Raskolnikov, but
there was no trace of him. With a curse he returned with rapid steps to
the Palais de Cristal to question Zametov.

Raskolnikov walked straight to X---- Bridge, stood in the middle, and
leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On parting
with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could scarcely reach this
place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street. Bending
over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of the
sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in the gathering twilight, at
one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though on fire in
the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water of the canal,
and the water seemed to catch his attention. At last red circles flashed
before his eyes, the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal
banks, the carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started,
saved again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sigh