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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 393
"I too know it wasn't a louse," he answered, looking strangely
at her. "But I am talking nonsense, Sonia," he added. "I've been
talking nonsense a long time. . . . That!s not it, you are right
there. There were quite, quite other causes for it! I haven't
talked to anyone for so long, Sonia. . . . My head aches dread-
fully now."
His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost dehr-
ious; an uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion
could be seen through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was
suffering. She too was growing dizzy. And he talked so
strangely; it seemed somehow comprehensible, but yet . . . "But
how, how! Good God!" And she wrung her hands in despair.
"No, Sonia, that's not it," he began again suddenly, raising
his head, as though a new and sudden train of thought had
struck and as it were roused him — "that's not it! Better . . .
imagine — yes, it's certainly better — imagine that I am vain,
envious, malicious, base, vindictive and . . . well, perhaps with
a tendency to insanity. (Let's have it all out at once! They've
talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just now I
could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that
perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me
what I needed for the fees and I could have earned enough for
clothes, boots and food, no doubt. Lessons had turned up at
half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I turned sulky and
wouldn't. (Yes, sulkiness, that's the right word for it!) I sat
in my room like a spider. You've been in my den, you've seen it.
. . . And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms
cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And
yet I wouldn't go out of it! I wouldn't on purpose! I didn't go
out for days together, and I wouldn't work, I wouldn't even
eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Nastasya brought me any-
thing, Iate it, if she didn't, I went all day without; I wouldn't
ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay
in the dark and I wouldn't earn money for candles. I ought to
have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies an inch
thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and
thinking. And I kept thinking. . . . And I had dreams all the
time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then
I began to fancy that. . . . No, that's not it! Again I am telling
you wrong! You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so
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