while... eh? Confess, now, that it has been perhaps your own fault?” he added, with a tentative smile, as though still afraid of irritating him.

“It is very possible,” answered Raskolnikov coldly.

“I should say, too,” continued Zossimov with zest, “that your complete recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to you, I should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid the elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce your morbid condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will go from bad to worse. These fundamental causes I don’t know, but they must be known to you. You are an intelligent man, and must have observed yourself, of course. I fancy the first stage of your derangement coincides