Well, perhaps I am, he-he-he! Perhaps you’d better not believe my word, perhaps you’d better never believe it altogether — I’m made that way, I confess it. But let me add, you can judge for yourself, I think, how far I am a base sort of man and how far I am honest.”

“When do you mean to arrest me?”

“Well, I can let you walk about another day or two. Think it over, my dear fellow, and pray to God. It’s more in your interest, believe me.”

“And what if I run away?” asked Raskolnikov with a strange smile.

“No, you won’t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man’s thought, for you’ve