verance from another feeling, darker and more bitter,
which he could not himself have defined.

He went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist. She did not
resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant eyes.
He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able to
utter a sound.

"Let me go," Dounia implored. Svidrigailov shuddered. Her voice now was
quite different.

"Then you don't love me?" he asked softly. Dounia shook her head.

"And... and you can't? Never?" he whispered in despair.

"Never!"

There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of
Svidrigailov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly
he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it.
Another moment passed.

"Here's the key."

He took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the table
behind him, without turning or looking at Dounia.

"Take it! Make haste!"

He looked stubbornly out of the window. Dounia went up to the table to
take the key.

"Make haste! Make haste!" repeated Svidrigailov, still without turning
or moving. But there seemed a terrible significance in the tone of that
"make haste."

Dounia understood it, snatched up the key, flew to the door, unlocked it
quickly and rushed out of the room. A minute later, beside herself, she
ran out on to the canal bank in the direction of X. Bridge.

Svidrigailov remained three minutes standing at the window. At last he
slowly turned, looked about him and passed his hand over his forehead. A
strange smile contorted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of
despair. The blood, which was already getting dry, smeared his hand.
He looked angrily at it, then wetted a towel and washed his temple.
The revolver which Dounia had flung away lay near the door and suddenly
caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it. It was a little pocket
three-barrel revolver of old-fashioned construction. There were still
two charges and one capsule left in it. It could be fired again. He
thought a little, put the revolver in his pocket, took his hat and went
out.

CHAPTER VI

He spent that evening till ten o'clock going from one low haunt to
another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a certain
"villain and tyrant,"

"began kissing Katia."

Svidrigailov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers and
the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn t