she picked out such dear little boots, for she has taste, you don’t know. And there in the shop she burst out crying before the shopmen because she hadn’t enough. … Ah, it was sad to see her. …”
“Well, after that I can understand your living like this,” Raskolnikov said with a bitter smile.
“And aren’t you sorry for them? Aren’t you sorry?” Sonia flew at him again.
“Why, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you’d seen nothing of it, and if you’d seen everything, oh dear! And how often, how often I’ve brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I! Only a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I’ve done it! Ah, I’ve been wretched at the thought of it all day!”
Sonia wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it.
“You were cruel?”
“Yes, I—I. I went to see them,” she went on, weeping, “and father said, ‘read me something, Sonia, my head aches, read to me, here’s a book.’ He had a book he had got from Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, he lives there, he always used to get hold of such funny books. And I said, ‘I can’t stay,’ as I didn’t want to read, and I’d gone in chiefly to show Katerina Ivanovna some collars. Lizaveta, the pedlar, sold me some collars and cuffs cheap, pretty, new, embroidered ones. Katerina Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself in the glass and was delighted with them. ‘Make me a present of them, Sonia,’ she said, ‘please do.’