on to his lips.

"To-day! To-day," he repeated to himself. "Yes, to-day! So it must
be...."

But as he was about to open the door, it began opening of itself. He
started and moved back. The door opened gently and slowly, and there
suddenly appeared a figure--yesterday's visitor _from underground_.

The man stood in the doorway, looked at Raskolnikov without speaking,
and took a step forward into the room. He was exactly the same as
yesterday; the same figure, the same dress, but there was a great change
in his face; he looked dejected and sighed deeply. If he had only put
his hand up to his cheek and leaned his head on one side he would have
looked exactly like a peasant woman.

"What do you want?" asked Raskolnikov, numb with terror. The man was
still silent, but suddenly he bowed down almost to the ground, touching
it with his finger.

"What is it?" cried Raskolnikov.

"I have sinned," the man articulated softly.

"How?"

"By evil thoughts."

They looked at one another.

"I was vexed. When you came, perhaps in drink, and bade the porters go
to the police station and asked about the blood, I was vexed that they
let you go and took you for drunken. I was so vexed that I lost my
sleep. And remembering the address we came here yesterday and asked for
you...."

"Who came?" Raskolnikov interrupted, instantly beginning to recollect.

"I did, I've wronged you."

"Then you come from that house?"

"I was standing at the gate with them... don't you remember? We have
carried on our trade in that house for years past. We cure and prepare
hides, we take work home... most of all I was vexed...."

And the whole scene of the day before yesterday in the gateway came
clearly before Raskolnikov's mind; he recollected that there had
been several people there besides the porters, women among them.
He remembered one voice had suggested taking him straight to the
police-station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and even
now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned round
and made him some answer....

So this was the solution of yesterday's horror. The most awful thought
was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for himself
on account of such a _trivial_ circumstance. So this man could tell
nothing except his asking about the flat and the blood stains. So
Porfiry, too, had nothing but that _delirium_, no facts but this
_psychology_ which _cuts both ways_, nothing positive