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- 3 84 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
"This time Luzhin did not want to prosecute you," he began,
not looking at Sonia, "but if he had wanted to, if it had suited
his plans, he would have sent you to prison if it had not been for
Lebeziatnikov and me. Ah?"
"Yes," she assented in a faint voice. "Yes," she repeated,
preoccupied and distressed.
"But I might easily not have been there. And it was quite
an accident Lebeziatnikov's turning up."Sonia was silent.
"And if you'd gone to prison, what then? Do you rememlser
what I said yesterday?"
Again she did not ans'yer. He waited.
"I thought you would cry out again 'don't speak of it, leave
off.'" Raskolnikov gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. "What,
silence again?" he asked a minute later. "We must talk about
something, you know. It would be interesting for me to know
how you would decide a certain 'problem' as Lebeziatnikov
would say." (He was beginning to lose the thread.) "No, really,
I am serious. Imagine, Sonia, that you had known all Luzhin's
intentions beforehand. Known, that is, for a fact, that they
would be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna and the children and
yourself thrown in — since you don't count yourself for any-
thing— Polenka too . . . for she'll go the same way. Well, if sud-
denly it all depended on your decision whether he or they
should go on living, that is whether Luzhin should go on living
and doing wicked things, or Katerina Ivanovna should die?
How would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?"
Sonia looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar
in this hesitating question, which seemed approaching some-
thing ina roundabout way.
"I felt that you were going to ask some question like that,"
she said, looking inquisitively at him.
"I dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?"
"Why do you ask about what could not happen?" said Sonia
reluctantly.
"Then it would be better for Luzhin to go on living and
doing 'vicked things? You haven't dared to decide even that!"
"But I can't know the Divine Providence. . . . And why do
you ask what can't be answered? What's the use of such foolish
questions? How could it happen that it should depend on my
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