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- 490 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
A minute he gazed at the deUcate expressive face of his be-
trothed, kissed the portrait and gave it to Dounia.
"I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her," he
said thoughtfully. "To her heart I confided much of what has
since been so hideously realised. Don't be uneasy," he returned
to Dounia, "she was as much opjxjsed to it as you, and I am glad
that she is gone. The great point is that everything now is going
to be different, is going to be broken in two," he cried, suddenly
returning to his dejection. "Everything, everything, and am I
prepared for it? Do I want it myself? They say it is necessary
for me to suffer! What's the object of these senseless sufferings?
shall I know any better what they are for, when I am crushed
by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old man after twenty
years' penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then?
Why am I consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was con-
temptible when I stood looking at the Neva at daybreak to-
day!"At last they both went out. It was hard for Dounia, but she
loved him. She walked away, but after going fifty paces she
turned round to look at him again. He was still in sight. At the
corner he too turned and for the last time their eyes met; but
noticing that she was looking at him, he motioned her away with
impatience and even vexation, and turned the corner abruptly.
"I am wicked, I see that," he thought to himself, feeling
ashamed a moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. "But
why are they so fond of me if I don't deserve it? Oh, if only I
were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved any
one! Nothing of all' this would have happened. But I wonder
shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so meek that I
shall hvmible myself before people and whimper at every word
that I am a criminal. Yes, that's it, that's it, that's what they
are sending me there for, that's what they want. Look at them
running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoun-
drel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to
get me off and they'd be wild with righteous indignation. Oh,
how I hate them all!"
He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that
he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately —
humbled by conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would
not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly?
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