ng--a louse!"

"I too know it wasn't a louse," he answered, looking strangely at
her. "But I am talking nonsense, Sonia," he added. "I've been talking
nonsense a long time.... That's not it, you are right there. There were
quite, quite other causes for it! I haven't talked to anyone for so
long, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now."

His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an
uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen
through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too
was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow
comprehensible, but yet... "But how, how! Good God!" And she wrung her
hands in despair.

"No, Sonia, that's not it," he began again suddenly, raising his head,
as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were
roused him--"that's not it! Better... imagine--yes, it's certainly
better--imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive
and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let's have it all out
at once! They've talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just
now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that
perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed
for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food,
no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I
turned sulky and wouldn't. (Yes, sulkiness, that's the right word for
it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You've been in my den, you've seen
it.... And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp
the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn't
go out of it! I wouldn't on purpose! I didn't go out for days together,
and I wouldn't work, I wouldn't even eat, I just lay there doing
nothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn't, I
went all day without; I wouldn't ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At
night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn't earn money for
candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies
an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and
thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strange
dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy
that... No, that's not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept
asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid--and