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- 78 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Still to overcome or to commit, to get out of that place and to
make his way home, it is very possible that he would have flung
up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and not
from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had
done. The feeling of loathing especially surged up within him
and grew stronger every minute. He would not now have gone
to the box or even into the room for anything in the world.
But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess had begun by degrees
to take possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or
rather forgot what was of importance and caught at trifles.
Glancing, however, into the kitchen and seeing a bucket half
full of water on a bench, he bethought him of washing his
hands and the axe. His hands were sticky with blood. He
dropped the axe with the blade in the water, snatched a piece of
yoap that lay in a broken saucer on the window, and began
washing his hands in the bucket. When they were clean, he took
out the axe, washed the blade and spent a long time, about three
minutes, washing the wood where there were spots of blood
rubbing them with soap. Then he wiped it all with some linen
that was hanging to dry on a line in the kitchen and then he was
a long while attentively examining the axe at the window. There
was no trace left on it, only the wood was still damp. He care-
fully hung the axe in the noose under his coat. Then as far as
was possible, in the dim light in the kitchen, he looked over
his overcoat, his trousers and his boots. At the first glance there
seemed to be nothing but stains on the boots. He wetted the rag
and rubbed the boots. But he knew he was not looking thor-
oughly, that there might be something quite noticeable that he
was overlooking. He stood in the middle of the room, lost in
thought. Dark agonising ideas rose in his mind — the idea that
he was mad and that at that moment he was incapable of reason-
ing, of protecting himself, that he ought perhaps to be doing
something utterly different from what he was now doing.
"Good God!" he muttered "I must fly, fly," and he rushed into
the entry. But here a shock of terror awaited him such as he
had never known before.
He stood and gazed and could not believe his eyes: the door,
the outer door from the stairs, at which he had not long before
waited and rung, was standing unfastened and at least six inches
open. No lock, no bolt, all the time, all that time! The old
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