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made me think that she would be sure not to be at home at that moment!
Why, why, why did I assume this so certainly?"

He was crushed and even humiliated. He could have laughed at himself in
his anger.... A dull animal rage boiled within him.

He stood hesitating in the gateway. To go into the street, to go a walk
for appearance' sake was revolting; to go back to his room, even more
revolting. "And what a chance I have lost for ever!" he muttered,
standing aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the porter's little
dark room, which was also open. Suddenly he started. From the porter's
room, two paces away from him, something shining under the bench to the
right caught his eye.... He looked about him--nobody. He approached the
room on tiptoe, went down two steps into it and in a faint voice called
the porter. "Yes, not at home! Somewhere near though, in the yard, for
the door is wide open." He dashed to the axe (it was an axe) and pulled
it out from under the bench, where it lay between two chunks of wood;
at once, before going out, he made it fast in the noose, he thrust both
hands into his pockets and went out of the room; no one had noticed him!
"When reason fails, the devil helps!" he thought with a strange grin.
This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.

He walked along quietly and sedately, without hurry, to avoid awakening
suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passers-by, tried to escape looking
at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable as possible.
Suddenly he thought of his hat. "Good heavens! I had the money the day
before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear instead!" A curse rose
from the bottom of his soul.

Glancing out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he saw by a clock on
the wall that it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make haste and at
the same time to go someway round, so as to approach the house from the
other side....

When he had happened to imagine all this beforehand, he had sometimes
thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not very much
afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed. His mind was even occupied
by irrelevant matters, but by nothing for long. As he passed the Yusupov
garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the building of great
fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere in all
the squares. By degrees he passed to the conviction that if the summer
garden were extended to the field of Mars, and perhaps joined to the
garden of the Mihailovsky Palace, it would be a splendid thing and a
great benefit to the town. Then he was interested by the question why
in all great towns men are not simply driven by necessity, but in some
peculiar way inclined to live in those parts of the town where there
are no gardens nor fountains; where there is most dirt and smell and all
sorts of nastiness. Then his own walks through the Hay Market came back
to his mind, and for a moment he waked up to reality. "What nonsense!"
he thought, "better think of nothing at all!"

"So probably men led to execution clutch mentally at every object that

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