he has, and how fine his whole face is! . . . He is even better looking than Dounia. . . . But, good heavens, what a suit—how terribly he's dressed! . . . Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch's shop, is better dressed! I could rush at him and hug him . . . weep over him—but I am afraid. . . . Oh, dear, he's so strange! He's talking kindly, but I'm afraid! Why, what am I afraid of? . . ."
"Oh, Rodya, you wouldn't believe," she began suddenly, in haste to answer his words to her, "how unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now that it's all over and done with and we are quite happy again—I can tell you. Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace you and that woman—ah, here she is! Good morning, Nastasya! . . . She told us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the streets. You can't imagine how we felt! I couldn't help thinking of the tragic end of Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father's—you can't remember him, Rodya—who ran out in the same way in a high fever and fell into the well in the court-yard and they couldn't pull him out till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of rushing to find Pyotr Petrovitch to ask him to help. . . . Because we were alone, utterly alone," she said plaintively and stopped short, suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Pyotr Petrovitch, although "we are quite happy again."
"Yes, yes. . . . Of course it's very annoying. . . ." Raskolnikov muttered in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed at him in perplexity.
"What else was it I wanted to say?" He went on trying to recollect. "Oh, yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don't think that I didn't mean to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first."
"What are you saying, Rodya?" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. She, too, was surprised.
"Is he answering us as a duty?" Dounia wondered. "Is he being reconciled and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating a lesson?"
"I've only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask
