“Didn’t I?”
“No!”
“I thought I did. When I came in and saw you lying with your eyes shut, pretending, I said to myself at once, ‘Here’s the man.’ ”
“What do you mean by ‘the man?’ What are you talking about?” cried Raskolnikov.
“What do I mean? I really don’t know. …” Svidrigaïlov muttered ingenuously, as though he, too, were puzzled.
For a minute they were silent. They stared in each other’s faces.
“That’s all nonsense!” Raskolnikov shouted with vexation. “What does she say when she comes to you?”
“She! Would you believe it, she talks of the silliest trifles and—man is a strange creature—it makes me angry. The first time she came in (I was tired you know: the funeral service, the funeral ceremony, the lunch afterwards. At last I was left alone in my study. I lighted a cigar and began to think), she came in at the door. ‘You’ve been so busy today, Arkady Ivanovitch, you have forgotten to wind the dining-room clock,’ she said. All those seven years I’ve wound that clock every week, and if I forgot it she would always remind me. The next day I set off on my way here. I got out at the station at daybreak; I’d been asleep, tired out, with my eyes half open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and there was suddenly Marfa Petrovna sitting beside me with a pack of cards in her hands. ‘Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Arkady Ivanovitch?’ She was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never forgive myself for not asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and, besides, the bell rang. I was sitting today, feeling very heavy after a miserable dinner from a cookshop; I was sitting smoking, all of a sudden Marfa Petrovna again. She came in very smart in