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seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round
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her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she
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turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same
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moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her
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eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and
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that at last the moment had come....
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They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They
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were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the
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dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were
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renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the
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heart of the other.
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They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to
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wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before
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them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his
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being, while she--she only lived in his life.
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On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked,
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Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fancied
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that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at him
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differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they answered
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him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound
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to be so. Wasn’t everything now bound to be changed?
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He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her
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and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face.
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But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what
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infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all,
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_all_ the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence
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and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an
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external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not
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think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have
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analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped
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into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself
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out in his mind.
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Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically.
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The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the
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raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry
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him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with
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books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject
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and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it
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himself not long before his illness and she brought him the book without
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a word. Till now he had not opened it.
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He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: “Can
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her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at
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least....”
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She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken
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ill again. But she was so happy--and so unexpectedly happy--that she was
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almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, _only_ seven years! At
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the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready
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to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not
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know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would
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have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great
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suffering.
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But that is the beginning of a new story--the story of the gradual
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renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing
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from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life.
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That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is
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ended.
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