What, you don't understand?
You'll understand later....
Freedom and power, and above all, power!
Over all trembling creation and all the ant-heap!...
That's the goal, remember that!
That's my farewell message.
Perhaps it's the last time I shall speak to you.
If I don't come to-morrow, you'll hear of it all, and then remember these words.
And some day later on, in years to come, you'll understand perhaps what they meant.
If I come to-morrow, I'll tell you who killed Lizaveta....
Good-bye."
Sonia started with terror.
"Why, do you know who killed her?" she asked, chilled with horror, looking wildly at him.
"I know and will tell... you, only you.
I have chosen you out.
I'm not coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you.
I chose you out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you and when Lizaveta was alive, I thought of it.
Good-bye, don't shake hands.
To-morrow!"
He went out.
Sonia gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself was like one insane and felt it.
Her head was going round.
"Good heavens, how does he know who killed Lizaveta?
What did those words mean?
It's awful!"
But at the same time _the idea_ did not enter her head, not for a moment!
"Oh, he must be terribly unhappy!...
He has abandoned his mother and sister....
What for?
What has happened?
And what had he in his mind?
What did he say to her?
He had kissed her foot and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he could not live without her....
Oh, merciful heavens!"
Sonia spent the whole night feverish and delirious.
She jumped up from time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into feverish sleep and dreamt of Polenka, Katerina Ivanovna and Lizaveta, of reading the gospel and him... him with pale face, with burning eyes... kissing her feet, weeping.
On the other side of the door on the right, which divided Sonia's room from Madame Resslich's flat, was a room which had long stood empty. A card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over the canal advertising it to let.
Sonia had long been accustomed to the room's being uninhabited.
But all that time Mr. Svidrigailov had been standing, listening at the door of the empty room.
When Raskolnikov went out he stood still, thought a moment, went on tiptoe to his own room which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair and noiselessly carried it to the door that led to Sonia's room.
The conversation had struck him as interesting and remarkable, and he had greatly enjoyed it--so much so that he brought a chair that he might not in the future, to-morrow, for instance, have to endure the inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but might listen in comfort.
CHAPTER V
When next morning at eleven o'clock punctually Raskolnikov went into the department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his name in to Porfiry Petrovitch, he was surprised at being kept waiting so long: it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned.
He had expected that they would pounce upon him.
But he stood in the waiting-room, and people, who apparently had nothing to do with him, were continually passing to and fro before him.
In the next room which looked like an office, several clerks were sitting writing and obviously they had no notion who or what Raskolnikov might be.
He looked uneasily and suspiciously about him to see whether there was not some guard, some mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his escape.
But there was nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of clerks absorbed in petty details, then other people, no one seemed to have any concern with him. He might go where he liked for them.
The conviction grew stronger in him that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the earth, had seen everything, they would not have let him stand and wait like that.
And would they have waited till he elected to appear at eleven?