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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 221
tomb," said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, suddenly breaking the
oppressive silence, "I am sure it's quite half through your lodg-
ing you have become so melancholy."
"My lodging," he answered, listlessly. "Yes, the lodging had
a great deal to do with it. ... I thought that, too. ... If only
you knew, though, what a strange thing you said just now,
mother," he said, laughing strangely.
A little more, and their companionship, this mother and this
sister, with him after three years' absence, this intimate tone of
conversation, in face of the utter impossibility of really speak-
ing about anything, would have been beyond his power of en-
durance. But there was one urgent matter which must be set-
tled one way or the other that day — so he had decided when he
woke. Now he was glad to remember it, as a means of escape.
"Listen, Dounia," he began, gravely and drily, "of course
I beg your pardon for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to
tell you again that I do not withdraw from my chief point.
It is me or Luzhin. If I am a scoundrel, you must not be. One
is enough. If you marry Luzhin, I cease at once to look on you
as a sister."
"Rodya, Rodya! It is the same as yesterday again," Pul-
cheria Alexandrovna cried, mournfully. "And why do you call
yourself a scoundrel? I can't bear it. You said the same yes-
terday."
"Brother," Dounia answered firmly and with the same dry-
ness. "In all this there is a mistake on your part. I thought it
over at night, and found out the mistake. It is all because you
seem to fancy I am sacrificing myself to some one and for some
one. That is not the case at all. I am simply marrying for my
own sake, because things are hard for me. Though, of course, I
shall be glad if I succeed in being useful to my family. But that
is not the chief motive for my decision. . . ."
"She is lying," he thought to himself, biting his nails vindic-
tively. "Proud creature! She won't admit she wants to do it
out of charity! Too haughty! Oh, base characters! They even
love as though they hate. . . . Oh, how I . . . hate them all!"
"In fact," continued Dounia, "I am marrying Pyotr Petro-
vitch because of two evils I choose the less. I intend to do
honestly all he expects of me, so I am not deceiving him. . . .
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