There was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be glad to think that he was still proud.
“You don’t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?” he asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile.
“Oh, Rodya, hush!” cried Dounia bitterly.
Silence lasted for two minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Dounia stood at the other end of the table and looked at him with anguish.
Suddenly he got up.
“It’s late, it’s time to go! I am going at once to give myself up. But I don’t know why I am going to give myself up.”
Big tears fell down her cheeks.
“You are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?”
“You doubted it?”
She threw her arms round him.
“Aren’t you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering?” she cried, holding him close and kissing him.
“Crime? What crime?” he cried in sudden fury. “That I killed a vile noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one! … Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? ‘A crime! a crime!’ Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice, now that I