y
reliable and cut both ways: illness, delirium, I don't remember--that's
all right, but why, my good sir, in your illness and in your delirium
were you haunted by just those delusions and not by any others? There
may have been others, eh? He-he-he!"

Raskolnikov looked haughtily and contemptuously at him.

"Briefly," he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in so
doing pushing Porfiry back a little, "briefly, I want to know, do you
acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me, Porfiry
Petrovitch, tell me once for all and make haste!"

"What a business I'm having with you!" cried Porfiry with a perfectly
good-humoured, sly and composed face. "And why do you want to know, why
do you want to know so much, since they haven't begun to worry you? Why,
you are like a child asking for matches! And why are you so uneasy? Why
do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!"

"I repeat," Raskolnikov cried furiously, "that I can't put up with it!"

"With what? Uncertainty?" interrupted Porfiry.

"Don't jeer at me! I won't have it! I tell you I won't have it. I can't
and I won't, do you hear, do you hear?" he shouted, bringing his fist
down on the table again.

"Hush! Hush! They'll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of
yourself. I am not joking," Porfiry whispered, but this time there was
not the look of old womanish good nature and alarm in his face. Now
he was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all
mystification.

But this was only for an instant. Raskolnikov, bewildered, suddenly fell
into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed the command to
speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of fury.

"I will not allow myself to be tortured," he whispered, instantly
recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and
driven to even greater fury by the thought. "Arrest me, search me, but
kindly act in due form and don't play with me! Don't dare!"

"Don't worry about the form," Porfiry interrupted with the same sly
smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Raskolnikov. "I invited
you to see me quite in a friendly way."

"I don't want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And, here,
I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to arrest me?"

He took up his cap and went to the door.

"And won't you see my little surprise?" chuckled Porfiry, again taking
him by the arm and stopping him at the door.

He see