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- 58 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Open . . . that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, break the
lock, steal ^nd tremble; hide, all spattered in the blood . . . with
the axe. . . . Good God, can it be?"
He was shaking like a leaf as he said this.
"But why am I going on like this?" he continued, sitting up
again, as it were in profound amazement. "I knew that I could
never bring myself to it, so what have I been torturing myself
for till now? Yesterday, yesterday, when I went to make that
. . . experiment, yesterday I realised completely that I could
never bear to do it. . . . Why am I going over it again, then?
Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs yesterday,
I said myself that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile . . . the very
thought of it made me feel sick and filled me with horror."
"No, I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it! Granted, granted that
there is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have con-
cluded this last month is clear as day, true as arithmetic. . . . My
God! Anyway I couldn't bring myself to it! I couldn't do it,
I couldn't do it! Why, why then am I still . . . ?"
He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though sur-
prised atfinding himself in this place, and went towards the
bridge. He was pale, his eyes glowed, he was exhausted in every
limb, but he seemed suddenly to breathe more easily. He felt he
had cast oflf that fearful burden that had so long been weighing
upon him, and all at once there was a sense of relief and peace in
his soul. "Lord," he prayed, "show me my path — I renounce that
accursed . . . dream of mine."
Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva,
at the glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of
his weakness he was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though
an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart
had suddenly broken. Freedom, freedom! He was free from that
spell, that sorcery, that obsession!
Later on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to
him during those days, minute by minute, point by point, he
was superstitiously impressed by one circumstance, which
though in itself not very exceptional, always seemed to him
afterwards the predestined turning-point of his fate. He could
never understand and explain to himself why, when he was tired
and worn out, when it would have been more convenient for
him to go home by the shortest and most direct way, he had
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