ct
an explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and waiting for it, I see
that. But what can I tell you? You won't understand and will only suffer
misery... on my account! Well, you are crying and embracing me again.
Why do you do it? Because I couldn't bear my burden and have come to
throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can
you love such a mean wretch?"

"But aren't you suffering, too?" cried Sonia.

Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again for an
instant softened it.

"Sonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a great
deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn't have
come. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never mind! That's
not the point. I must speak now, but I don't know how to begin."

He paused and sank into thought.

"Ach, we are so different," he cried again, "we are not alike. And why,
why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that."

"No, no, it was a good thing you came," cried Sonia. "It's better I
should know, far better!"

He looked at her with anguish.

"What if it were really that?" he said, as though reaching a conclusion.
"Yes, that's what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I
killed her.... Do you understand now?"

"N-no," Sonia whispered naively and timidly. "Only speak, speak, I shall
understand, I shall understand _in myself_!" she kept begging him.

"You'll understand? Very well, we shall see!" He paused and was for some
time lost in meditation.

"It was like this: I asked myself one day this question--what if
Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had
not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his
career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things,
there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had
to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you
understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there had
been no other means? Wouldn't he have felt a pang at its being so far
from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I
worried myself fearfully over that 'question' so that I was awfully
ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would
not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck
him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there
was anything in it to pause