On a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick.

　　Chapter Four

　　RASKOLNIKOV WENT straight to the house on the canal bank where Sonialived. It was an old green house of three storeys. He found the porterand obtained from him vague directions as to the whereabouts ofKapernaumov, the tailor. Having found in the corner of the courtyardthe entrance to the dark and narrow staircase, he mounted to thesecond floor and came out into a gallery that ran round the wholesecond storey over the yard. While he was wandering in the darkness,uncertain where to turn for Kapernaumov's door, a door opened threepaces from him; he mechanically took hold of it.

　　"Who is there?" a woman's voice asked uneasily.

　　"It's I... come to see you," answered Raskolnikov and he walked intothe tiny entry.

　　On a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick.

　　"It's you! Good heavens!" cried Sonia weakly and she stood rooted tothe spot.

　　"Which is your room? This way?" and Raskolnikov, trying not tolook at her, hastened in.

　　A minute later Sonia, too, came in with the candle, set down thecandlestick and, completely disconcerted, stood before himinexpressibly agitated and apparently frightened by his unexpectedvisit. The colour rushed suddenly to her pale face and tears came intoher eyes... She felt sick and ashamed and happy, too.... Raskolnikovturned away quickly and sat on a chair by the table. He scanned theroom in a rapid glance.

　　It was a large but exceeding low-pitched room, the only one let bythe Kapernaumovs, to whose rooms a closed door led in the wall onthe left. In the opposite side on the right hand wall was anotherdoor, always kept locked. That led to the next flat, which formed aseparate lodging. Sonia's room looked like a barn; it was a veryirregular quadrangle and this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wallwith three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so thatone corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see init without very strong light. The other corner wasdisproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any furniture in the bigroom: in the corner on the right was a bedstead, beside it, nearestthe door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a blue cloth stoodagainst the same wall, close to the door into the other flat. Tworush-bottom chairs stood by the table. On the opposite wall near theacute angle stood a small plain wooden chest of drawers looking, as itwere, lost in a desert. That was all there was in the room. Theyellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the corners. Itmust have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There was everysign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain.

　　Sonia looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively andunceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last totremble with terror, as though she was standing before her judge andthe arbiter of her destinies.