mad after all? Who says she is not so? Is she in full
possession of all her faculties? Is it possible to speak as she does?
Do people of sound judgment reason as she reasons? Can people
anticipate future destruction with such tranquillity, turning a deaf
ear to warnings and forebodings? Does she expect a miracle? It must be
so. And does not all this seem like signs of mental derangement?"

To this idea he clung obstinately. Sonia mad! Such a prospect
displeased him less than the other ones. Once more he examined the
girl attentively. "And you--you often pray to God, Sonia?" he asked
her.

No answer. Standing by her side, he waited for a reply. "What could I
be, what should I be without God?" cried she in a low-toned but
energetic voice, and whilst casting on Raskolnikoff a rapid glance of
her brilliant eyes, she gripped his hand.

"Come, I was not mistaken!" he muttered to himself.--"And what does
God do for you?" asked he, anxious to clear his doubts yet more.

For a long time the girl remained silent, as if incapable of reply.
Emotion made her bosom heave. "Stay! Do not question me! You have no
such right!" exclaimed she, all of a sudden, with looks of anger.

"I expected as much!" was the man's thought.

"God does everything for me!" murmured the girl rapidly, and her eyes
sank.

"At last I have the explanation!" he finished mentally, whilst eagerly
looking at her.

He experienced a new, strange, almost unhealthy feeling on watching
this pale, thin, hard-featured face, these blue and soft eyes which
could yet dart such lights and give utterance to such passion; in a
word, this feeble frame, yet trembling with indignation and anger,
struck him as weird,--nay, almost fantastic. "Mad! she must be mad!"
he muttered once more. A book was lying on the chest of drawers.
Raskolnikoff had noticed it more than once whilst moving about the
room. He took it and examined it. It was a Russian translation of the
Gospels, a well-thumbed leather-bound book.

"Where does that come from?" asked he of Sonia, from the other end of
the room.

The girl still held the same position, a pace or two from the table.
"It was lent me," replied Sonia, somewhat loth, without looking at
Raskolnikoff.

"Who lent it you?"

"Elizabeth--I asked her to!"

"Elizabeth. How strange!" he thought. Everything with Sonia assumed to
his mind an increasingly extraordinary aspect. He took the book to the
light, and turned it over. "Where is menti