Pagina 745 di 1294

On the opposite wall near the acute angle stood a small plain

wooden chest of drawers looking, as it were, lost in a desert.

That was all there was in the room. The yellow, scratched and

shabby wall-paper was black in the corners. It must have been

damp and full of fumes in the winter. There was every sign of

poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain.

Sonia looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively

and unceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last

to tremble with terror, as though she was standing before her

judge and the arbiter of her destinies.

"I am late.... It's eleven, isn't it?" he asked, still not

lifting his eyes.

"Yes," muttered Sonia, "oh yes, it is," she added, hastily, as

though in that lay her means of escape. "My landlady's clock has

just struck... I heard it myself...."

"I've come to you for the last time," Raskolnikov went on

gloomily, although this was the first time. "I may perhaps not

see you again..."

"Are you... going away?"