y, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed
at him in perplexity.

"What else was it I wanted to say?" He went on trying to recollect. "Oh,
yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don't think that I didn't mean
to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first."

"What are you saying, Rodya?" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. She, too,
was surprised.

"Is he answering us as a duty?" Dounia wondered. "Is he being reconciled
and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating
a lesson?"

"I've only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing
to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Nastasya... to wash out
the blood... I've only just dressed."

"Blood! What blood?" Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in alarm.

"Oh, nothing--don't be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about
yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run
over... a clerk..."

"Delirious? But you remember everything!" Razumihin interrupted.

"That's true," Raskolnikov answered with special carefulness. "I
remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet--why I did
that and went there and said that, I can't clearly explain now."

"A familiar phenomenon," interposed Zossimov, "actions are sometimes
performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the
actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions--it's
like a dream."

"Perhaps it's a good thing really that he should think me almost a
madman," thought Raskolnikov.

"Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too," observed
Dounia, looking uneasily at Zossimov.

"There is some truth in your observation," the latter replied. "In that
sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the
slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we
must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among
dozens--perhaps hundreds of thousands--hardly one is to be met with."

At the word "madman," carelessly dropped by Zossimov in his chatter on
his favourite subject, everyone frowned.

Raskolnikov sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought with a
strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on something.

"Well, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!"
Razumihin cried hastily.

"What?" Raskolnikov seemed to wake up. "Oh... I got spattered with
blood helping to carry him to his lodging. By