murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. She knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now all these questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could not believe it: "He, he is a murderer! Could it be true?"
"What's the meaning of it? Where am I?" she said in complete bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. "How could you, you, a man like you. . . . How could you bring yourself to it? . . . What does it mean?"
"Oh, well–to plunder. Leave off, Sonia," he answered wearily, almost with vexation.
Sonia stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried:
"You were hungry! It was . . . to help your mother? Yes?"
"No, Sonia, no," he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. "I was not so hungry. . . . I certainly did want to help my mother, but . . . that's not the real thing either. . . . Don't torture me, Sonia."
Sonia clasped her hands.
"Could it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet rob and murder! Ah," she cried suddenly, "that money you gave Katerina Ivanovna . . . that money. . . . Can that money . . ."
"No, Sonia," he broke in hurriedly, "that money was not it. Don't worry yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, the day I gave it to you. . . . Razumihin saw it . . . he received it for me. . . . That money was mine–my own."
Sonia listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to comprehend.
"And that money. . . . I don't even know really whether there was any money," he added softly, as though reflecting. "I took a purse off her neck, made of chamois leather . . . a purse stuffed full of something . . . but I didn't look in it; I suppose I hadn't time. . . . And the things–chains and trinkets–I buried under a stone with the purse next morning in a yard off the V Prospect. They are all there now. . . . ."
Sonia strained every nerve to listen.
