looked about him.

"Very well then!" he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and
walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow and
empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed, there
was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out "to make an
end of it all." Complete apathy had succeeded to it.

"Well, it's a way out of it," he thought, walking slowly and listlessly
along the canal bank. "Anyway I'll make an end, for I want to.... But
is it a way out? What does it matter! There'll be the square yard of
space--ha! But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or
not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere to sit or lie
down soon! What I am most ashamed of is its being so stupid. But I don't
care about that either! What idiotic ideas come into one's head."

To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take the
second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at the
first turning he stopped and, after a minute's thought, turned into a
side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly without any
object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He walked, looking
at the ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper in his ear; he lifted
his head and saw that he was standing at the very gate of _the_ house.
He had not passed it, he had not been near it since _that_ evening.
An overwhelming, unaccountable prompting drew him on. He went into the
house, passed through the gateway, then into the first entrance on the
right, and began mounting the familiar staircase to the fourth storey.
The narrow, steep staircase was very dark. He stopped at each landing
and looked round him with curiosity; on the first landing the framework
of the window had been taken out. "That wasn't so then," he thought.
Here was the flat on the second storey where Nikolay and Dmitri had been
working. "It's shut up and the door newly painted. So it's to let." Then
the third storey and the fourth. "Here!" He was perplexed to find the
door of the flat wide open. There were men there, he could hear voices;
he had not expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last
stairs and went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were
workmen in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he
would find everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the
same places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture;