“I don’t know how to thank him either,” Raskolnikov went on, suddenly frowning and looking down. “Setting aside the question of payment— forgive me for referring to it (he turned to Zossimov)—I really don’t know what I have done to deserve such special attention from you! I simply don’t understand it … and … and … it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.”

“Don’t be irritated.” Zossimov forced himself to laugh. “Assume that you are my first patient—well—we fellows just beginning to practise love our first patients as if they were our children, and some almost fall in love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in patients.”

“I say nothing about him,” added Raskolnikov, pointing to Razumihin, “though he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble.”

“What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood to-day, are you?” shouted Razumihin.

If he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite. But Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and uneasily watching her brother.

“As for you, mother, I don’t dare to speak,” he went on, as though repeating a lesson learned by heart. “It is only to-day that I have been able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here yesterday, waiting for me to come back.”

When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his sister, smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of real unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught it at once, and warmly pressed his hand, overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her since their dispute the previous day. The mother’s face lighted up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken reconciliation. “Yes, that is what I love him for,” Razumihin, exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a vigorous turn in his chair. “He has these movements.”

“And how well he does it all,” the mother was thinking to herself. “What generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end to all the misunderstanding with his sister—simply by holding out his hand at the right minute and looking at her like that. … And what fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is! … He is even better looking than Dounia. … But, good heavens, what a suit —how terribly he’s dressed! … Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch’s shop, is better dressed! I could rush at him and hug him … weep over him—but I am afraid. … Oh, dear, he’s so strange! He’s talking kindly, but I’m afraid! Why, what am I afraid of? …”

“Oh, Rodya, you wouldn’t believe,” she began suddenly, in haste to answer his words to her, “how unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now that it’s all over and done with and we are quite happy again—I can tell you. Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace you and that woman—ah, here she is! Good morning, Nastasya! … She told us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the streets. You can’t imagine how we felt! I couldn’t help thinking of the tragic end of Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father’s— you can’t remember him, Rodya—who ran out in the same way in a high fever and fell into the well in the court-yard and they couldn’t pull him out till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of rushing to find Pyotr Petrovitch to ask him to help. … Because we were alone, utterly alone,” she said plaintively and stopped short, suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Pyotr Petrovitch, although “we are quite happy again.”

“Yes, yes. … Of course it’s very annoying. …” Raskolnikov muttered in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed at him in perplexity.

“What else was it I wanted to say?” He went on trying to recollect. “Oh, yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don’t think that I didn’t mean to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first.”