"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 gazing 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 himself!
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 to them?
That's only a phantom....
They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a virtue.
They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia!
I am not going to them.
And what should I say to them--that I murdered her, but did not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?" he added with a bitter smile.
"Why, they would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting it.
A coward and a fool!
They wouldn't understand and they don't deserve to understand.
Why should I go to them?
I won't.
Don't be a child, Sonia...."
"It will be too much for you to bear, too much!" she repeated, holding out her hands in despairing supplication.
"Perhaps I've been unfair to myself," he observed gloomily, pondering, "perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I've been in too great a hurry to condemn myself.
I'll make another fight for it."
A haughty smile appeared on his lips.
"What a burden to bear!
And your whole life, your whole life!"
"I shall get used to it," he said grimly and thoughtfully.
"Listen," he began a minute later, "stop crying, it's time to talk of the facts: I've come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track...."
"Ach!" Sonia cried in terror.
"Well, why do you cry out?
You want me to go to Siberia and now you are frightened?
But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up.
I shall make a struggle for it and they won't do anything to me.
They've no real evidence.
Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but to-day things are going better.
All the facts they know can be explained two ways, that's to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, do you understand? And I shall, for I've learnt my lesson.