anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt that he had, anyway, made these two poor women miserable, that he was, anyway, the cause …
“Dounia darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be forgiven if I am guilty). Goodbye! We won’t dispute. It’s time, high time to go. Don’t follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else to go. … But you go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to! It’s my last request of you. Don’t leave her at all; I left her in a state of anxiety, that she is not fit to bear; she will die or go out of her mind. Be with her! Razumihin will be with you. I’ve been talking to him. … Don’t cry about me: I’ll try to be honest and manly all my life, even if I am a murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make a name. I won’t disgrace you, you will see; I’ll still show. … Now goodbye for the present,” he concluded hurriedly, noticing again a strange expression in Dounia’s eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry, don’t cry: we are not parting forever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I’d forgotten!”
He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took from between the pages a little watercolour portrait on ivory.
It was the portrait of his landlady’s daughter, who had died of fever, that strange girl who had wanted to be a nun.
For a minute he gazed at the delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave it to Dounia.
“I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her,” he said thoughtfully. > “To her heart I confided much of what has since been so hideously realised. Don’t be uneasy,” he returned to Dounia, “she was as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The great point is that