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- 396 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Listen: when I went then to the old woman's I only went to
try. . . . You may be sure of that!"
"And you murdered her!"
"But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders?
Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you
some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I mur-
dered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever.
. . . But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I.
Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!" he cried in a
sudden spasm of agony, "let me be!"
He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in
his hands as in a vice.
"What suffering!" A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.
"Well, what am I to do now?" he asked, suddenly raising his
head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted by
despair.
"What are you to do?" she cried, jumping up, and her eyes
that had been full of tears suddenly began to shine. "Stand up!"
(She seized him by the shoulder, he got up, looking at her
almost bewildered.) "Go at once, this very minute, stand at
the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have
defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men
aloud, 'I am a murderer!' Then God will send you life again.
Will you go, will you go?" she asked him, trembling all over,
snatching his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gaz-
ing at him with eyes full of fire.
He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.
"You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?" he asked
gloomily.
"Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that's what you must do."
"No! I am not going to them, Sonia!"
"But how will you go on living? What will you live for?"
cried Sonia, "how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to
your mother? (Oh, what will become of them now!) But what
am I saying? You have abandoned your mother and your sister
already. He has abandoned them already! Oh God!" she cried,
"why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by him-
self! What will become of you now?"
"Don't be a child, Sonia," he said softly. "What wrong have
I done them? Why should I go to them? What should I say
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