But, nevertheless,

　　"Ach, you said that to them! And in her presence?" cried Sonia,frightened. "Sit down with me! An honour! Why, I'm...dishonourable.... Ah, why did you say that?"

　　"It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that ofyou, but because of your great suffering. But you are a greatsinner, that's true," he added almost solemnly, "and your worst sin isthat you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn'tthat fearful? Isn't it fearful that you are living in this filth whichyou loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you've onlyto open your eyes) that you are not helping any one by it, notsaving any one from anything! Tell me," he went on almost in a frenzy,"how this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side withother, opposite, holy feelings? It would be better, a thousand timesbetter and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!"

　　"But what would become of them?" Sonia asked faintly, gazing athim with eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion.

　　Raskolnikov looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face;so she must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, andearnestly she had thought out in her despair how to end it and soearnestly, that now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She hadnot even noticed the cruelty of his words. (The significance of hisreproaches and his peculiar attitude to her shame she had, ofcourse, not noticed either, and that, too, was clear to him.) But hesaw how monstrously the thought of her disgraceful, shamefulposition was torturing her and had long tortured her. "What, what," hethought, "could hitherto have hindered her from putting an end to it?"Only then he realised what those poor little orphan children andthat pitiful half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna, knocking her head againstthe wall in her consumption, meant for Sonia.

　　But, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her characterand the amount of education she had after all received, she couldnot in any case remain so. He was still confronted by the question howcould she have remained so long in that position without going outof her mind, since she could not bring herself to jump into the water?Of course he knew that Sonia's position was an exceptional case,though unhappily not unique and not infrequent, indeed; but thatvery exceptionalness, her tinge of education, her previous life might,one would have thought, have killed her at the first step on thatrevolting path. What held her up- surely not depravity? All thatinfamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop ofreal depravity had penetrated to her heart; he saw that. He sawthrough her as she stood before him....

　　"There are three ways before her," he thought, "the canal, themadhouse, or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mindand turns the heart to stone."

　　The last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he wasyoung, abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not helpbelieving that the last end was the most likely.

　　"But can that be true?" he cried to himself. "Can that creaturewho has still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciouslydrawn at last into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the processalready have begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear ittill now, because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No,no, that cannot be!" he cried, as Sonia had just before. "No, what haskept her from the canal till now is the idea of sin and they, thechildren.... And if she has not gone out of her mind... but who saysshe has not gone out of her mind? Is she in her senses? Can onetalk, can one reason as she does? How can she sit on the edge of theabyss of loathsomeness into which she is slipping and refuse to listenwhen she is told of danger? Does she expect a miracle? No doubt shedoes. Doesn't that all mean madness?"