“Did you meet her far from here?” he asked him.
“I tell you she was walking in front of me, staggering, just here, in the boulevard. She only just reached the seat and sank down on it.”
“Ah, the shameful things that are done in the world nowadays, God have mercy on us! An innocent creature like that, drunk already! She has been deceived, that’s a sure thing. See how her dress has been torn too. … Ah, the vice one sees nowadays! And as likely as not she belongs to gentlefolk too, poor ones maybe. … There are many like that nowadays. She looks refined, too, as though she were a lady,” and he bent over her once more.
Perhaps he had daughters growing up like that, “looking like ladies and refined” with pretensions to gentility and smartness. …
“The chief thing is,” Raskolnikov persisted, “to keep her out of this scoundrel’s hands! Why should he outrage her? It’s as