seemed not to understand what she was doing and what was going on.
"Well, you missed! Fire again, I'll wait," said Svidrigaïlov softly, still smiling, but gloomily. "If you go on like that, I shall have time to seize you before you cock again."
Dounia started, quickly cocked the pistol and again raised it.
"Let me be," she cried in despair. "I swear I'll shoot again. I . . . I'll kill you."
"Well . . . at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you don't . . . then." His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward. Dounia shot again: it missed fire.
"You haven't loaded it properly. Never mind, you have another charge there. Get it ready, I'll wait."
He stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at her with wild determination, with feverishly passionate, stubborn, set eyes. Dounia saw that he would sooner die than let her go. "And . . . now, of course she would kill him, at two paces!" Suddenly she flung away the revolver.
"She's dropped it!" said Svidrigaïlov with surprise, and he drew a deep breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his heart—perhaps not only the fear of death; indeed he may scarcely have felt it at that moment. It was the deliverance from another feeling, darker and more bitter, which he could not himself have defined.
He went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist. She did not resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant eyes. He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able to utter a sound.
"Let me go," Dounia implored. Svidrigaïlov shuddered. Her voice now was quite different.
"Then you don't love me?" he asked softly. Dounia shook her head.
"And . . . and you can't? Never?" he whispered in despair.
"Never!"
There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of Svidrigaïlov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it. Another moment passed.
