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 against the
abnormality of the social organisation and nothing more, and nothing
more; no other causes admitted!..."

"You are wrong there," cried Porfiry Petrovitch; he was noticeably
animated and kept laughing as he looked at Razumihin, which made him
more excited than ever.

"Nothing is admitted," Razumihin interrupted with heat.

"I am not wrong. I'll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them
is 'the influence of environment,' and nothing else. Their favourite
phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organised,
all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest
against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature
i