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- 468 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
"Let me be," she cried in despair. "I swear I'll shoot again.
I . . . I'll kill you."
"Well ... at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you
don't . . . then." His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward.
Dounia shot again: it missed fire.
"You haven't loaded it properly. Never mind, you have an-
other charge there. Get it ready, I'll wait."
He stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at
Ser with wild determination, with feverishly passionate, stub-
born, set eyes. Dounia saw that he would sooner die than let
her go. "And . . . now, of course she would kill him, at two
paces!" Suddenly she flung away the revolver.
"She's dropped it!" said Svidrigailov with surprise, and he
drew a deep breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his
heart — perhaps not only the fear of death; indeed he may
scarcely have felt it at that moment. It was the deliverance
from another feeling, darker and more bitter, which he could
not himself have defined.
He went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist.
She did not resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with
suppliant eyes. He tried to say something, but his lips moved
without being able to utter a sound.
"Let me go," Dounia implored. Svidrigailov shuddered. Her
voice now was quite different.
"Then you don't love me?" he asked softly. Dounia shook
her head.
"And . . . and you can't? Never?" he whispered in despair.
"Never!"
There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the
heart of Svidrigailov. He looked at her with an indescribable
gaze. Suddenly he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the
window and stood facing it. Another moment passed.
"Here's the key."
He took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the
table behind him, without turning or looking at Dounia.
"Take it! Make haste!"
He looked stubbornly out of the window. Dounia went up
to the table to take the key.
"Make haste! Make haste!" repeated Svidrigailov, still with-
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