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"But why am I going on like this?" he continued, sitting up again, as it
were in profound amazement. "I knew that I could never bring myself
to it, so what have I been torturing myself for till now? Yesterday,
yesterday, when I went to make that... _experiment_, yesterday I
realised completely that I could never bear to do it.... Why am I going
over it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs
yesterday, I said myself that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile... the
very thought of it made me feel sick and filled me with horror.

"No, I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it! Granted, granted that there is
no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last
month is clear as day, true as arithmetic.... My God! Anyway I couldn't
bring myself to it! I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it! Why, why then am
I still...?"

He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though surprised at
finding himself in this place, and went towards the bridge. He was pale,
his eyes glowed, he was exhausted in every limb, but he seemed suddenly
to breathe more easily. He felt he had cast off that fearful burden that
had so long been weighing upon him, and all at once there was a sense
of relief and peace in his soul. "Lord," he prayed, "show me my path--I
renounce that accursed... dream of mine."

Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the
glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his weakness he
was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though an abscess that had been
forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken. Freedom,
freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!

Later on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to him during
those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously
impressed by one circumstance, which, though in itself not very
exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the predestined
turning-point of his fate. He could never understand and explain to
himself why, when he was tired and worn out, when it would have been
more convenient for him to go home by the shortest and most direct way,
he had returned by the Hay Market where he had no need to go. It was
obviously and quite unnecessarily out of his way, though not much so. It
is true that it happened to him dozens of times to return home without
noticing what streets he passed through. But why, he was always asking
himself, why had such an important, such a decisive and at the same time
such an absolutely chance meeting happened in the Hay Market (where he
had moreover no reason to go) at the very hour, the very minute of his
life when he was just in the very mood and in the very circumstances
in which that meeting was able to exert the gravest and most decisive
influence on his whole destiny? As though it had been lying in wait for
him on purpose!

It was about nine o'clock when he crossed the Hay Market. At the tables
and the barrows, at the booths and the shops, all the market people were
closing their establishments or clearing away and packing up their

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