A lethargy had come upon him at times. From the moment of the scene with Nikolay at Porfiry’s he had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape. After Nikolay’s confession, on that very day had come the scene with Sonia; his behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike anything he could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler, instantly and fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Sonia, he had agreed in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his mind!

“And Svidriga�lov was a riddle... He worried him, that was true, but somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to come with Svidriga�lov. Svidriga�lov, too, might be a means of escape; but Porfiry was a different matter.

“And so Porfiry