Page:Crime and Punishment - Garnett - Neilson - 1917.djvu/291

 Rh my first visit. Porfiry does not consider him a visitor; sits with his back to him. They're as thick as thieves, no doubt, over me! Not a doubt they were talking about me before we came. Do they know about the flat? If only they'd make haste! When I said that I ran away to take a flat he let it pass. . . . I put that in cleverly about a flat, it may be of use afterwards. . . . Delirious, indeed. . . ha-ha-ha! He knows all about last night! He didn't know of my mother's arrival! The hag had written the date on in pencil! You are wrong, you won't catch me! There are no facts. . . it's all supposition! You produce facts! The flat even isn't a fact but delirium. I know what to say to them. . . . Do they know about the flat? I won't go without finding out. What did I come for? But my being angry now, maybe is a fact! Fool, how irritable I am! Perhaps that's right; to play the invalid. . . . He is feeling me. He will try to catch me. Why did I come?"

All this flashed like lightning through his mind.

Porfiry Petrovitch returned quickly. He became suddenly more jovial.

"Your party yesterday, brother, has left my head rather. . . . And I am out of sorts altogether," he began in quite a different tone, laughing to Razumihin.

"Was it interesting? I left you yesterday at the most interesting point. Who got the best of it?"

"Oh, no one, of course. They got on to everlasting questions, floated off into space."

"Only fancy, Rodya, what we got on to yesterday. Whether there is such a thing as crime. I told you that we talked our heads off."

"What is there strange? It's an everyday social question," Raskolnikov answered casually.

"The question wasn't put quite like that," observed Porfiry.

"Not quite, that's true," Razumihin agreed at once, getting warm and hurried as usual. "Listen, Rodion, and tell us your opinion, I want to hear it. I was fighting tooth and nail with them and wanted you to help me. I told them you were coming. . . . It began with the socialist doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest